UC-NRLF 


Sbfi 


HAN 


BIBLE    CLASSES. 


LIFE  OF  SX  PAUL 


REV  JAMES  STALKER.M.A. 


BERKEIEY 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CAl'"  "RN 


ST.  JAMES  CHURCH 
Great  Bar, 


ST- 


ST.  JAMES  CHURCH 
Great  Harrington,    Mass. 


ST.  JAMES  CHURCH 

Harrington, 


THE 

LIFE  OF  ST.  PAUL 


BY 
PROF.  JAMES  STALKER,  D.D. 

ATJTHOB  or  "THE  LIFE  or  JESUS  CHBIBT" 


WITH  FOREWORD  BY 
WILBERT  W.  WHITE,  D.D. 

PBESIDENT  OF  THE  BIBLE  TEACH  BBS*  TBAININQ  SCHOOL,  NEW  TOBK 


NSW  AND  REVISED  EDITION 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.    Revell    Company 

London        and         Edinburgh 


LOAN  STACK 


Copyright.  1912,  br 
AMERICAN  TRACT  SOCIETY 


57 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

FOREWORD 5 

I.    His  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 7 

II.    His  UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  His  WORK    .    16 

III.  His  CONVERSION 34 

IV.  His  GOSPEL 44 

V.    THE  WORK  AWAITING  THE  WORKER      ....    57 

VI.    His  MISSIONARY  TRAVELS 65 

VII.    His  WRITINGS  AND  His  CHARACTER      ....    89 

VIII.    PICTURE  OF  A  PAULINE  CHURCH 102 

IX.    His  GREAT  CONTROVERSY 113 

X.    THE  END 125 

HINTS  TO  TEACHERS  AND  QUESTIONS  FOR  PUPILS  ...  145 


830 


FOREWORD 

BY  WILBERT  W.  WHITE,  D.D. 

When  asked  to  write  a  foreword  to  Dr.  Stalker's 
"Life  of  St.  Paul,"  I  thought  of  two  things :  first  the 
impression  which  I  had  received  from  a  sermon  that  I 
heard  Dr.  Stalker  preach  a  good  many  years  ago  in 
his  own  pulpit  in  Glasgow,  Scotland,  and  secondly,  the 
honor  conferred  in  this  privilege  of  writing  a  foreword  to 
one  of  Dr.  Stalker's  books. 

I  felt  sure  before  even  glancing  at  the  pages  that  I 
should  be  pleased  and  profited  by  their  perusal. 

The  first  thing  that  I  did  was  to  glance  over  the 
pages  for  the  headings  of  chapters  and  the  summaries 
of  paragraphs.  I  found  the  arrangement  admirable, 
and  would  advise  those  into  whose  hands  this  fine  volume 
may  come  to  follow  this  plan. 

The  only  sentence  apart  from  the  headings  which  I 
read  in  the  aforesaid  preview  was  the  last  one  in  Chapter 
X,  and  that  because  the  closing  words,  "the  best  of 
friends,"  especially  arrested  my  attention. 

I  wondered  before  I  read  this  sentence  if  the  author 
was  saying  of  Paul  that  he  was  going  out  of  the  world 
to  the  One  who  had  been  to  him  the  best  of  friends. 
From  this  you  may  gather — what  you  like.  Only  I  felt 
sure  before  reading  the  pages  that  Dr.  Stalker  would 
interpret  Paul  in  a  manner  such  as  I  could  enthusiasti- 
cally approve. 

And  now  having  read  the  volume  I  heartily  commend 
it.  It  is  the  best  brief  life  of  Paul  of  which  I  know. 


6  FOREWORD 

Before  reading  the  book  I  said  to  myself,  I  shall  put 
down  what  I  think  the  writer  will  make  the  heart  of  the 
Secret  of  Paul.  It  was  this :  The  key  to  Paul's  efficiency 
was  his  wholehearted  persistent  loyalty  to  Christ,  his 
Saviour  and  Friend.  He  was  not  disobedient  to  the 
heavenly  vision.  He  stood  fast  in  the  liberty  wherewith 
Christ  set  him  free.  He  was  three  things  all  stated  in 
one  verse,  and  put  thus:  "I  am  crucified  with  Christ — 
Christ  liveth  in  me — I  live  in  faith." 

Here  are  some,  a  very  few  of  many  striking,  true 
thoughts  presented  by  Dr.  Stalker: 

"Paul  was  the  interpreter  of  Christ,  saying  what 
Christ  Himself  would  have  said  under  the  circumstances." 
|  "Paul's  entire  theology  was  nothing  but  the  explica- 
tion of  his  own  conversion." 

"In  bringing  Paul  West,  Providence  gave  to  Europe 
a  blessed  priority,  and  the  fate  of  our  continent  was  de- 
cided, when  Paul  crossed  the  ^Egean." 

"A  secret  of  Paul's  success  was  his  sense  of  having 
a  mission  and  his  freedom  alike  from  the  bondage  of 
bigotry  and  the  bondage  of  liberty." 

A  writer  recently  gave  me  this  thought  about  Paul: 
"What  makes  St.  Paul  so  interesting  is  his  conception 
of  the  dimensions  of  life." 

Back  to  Christ?  Yes,  the  whole  world  needs  it,  but 
the  way  to  get  back  to  Christ  is  through  the  Apostolic 
interpretation  of  Christ  in  words  and  life.  This  is  the 
only  way,  and  Dr.  Stalker's  book  is  a  great  help  in  this 
direction. 


THE   LIFE   OF   ST.   PAUL 

CHAPTER   I 
HIS  PLACE  IN  HISTORY 


Paragraphs  1-12. 

1,  2.     The  Man  Needed  by  the  Time. 
8,  4.     A  Type  of  Christian  Character. 
5-8.     The  Thinker  of  Christianity. 
9-12.  The  Missionary  of  the  Gentiles. 

1.  The  Man  for  the  Time. — There  are  some  men 
whose  lives  it  is  impossible  to  study  without  receiving  the 
impression  that  they  were  expressly  sent  into  the  world  to» 
do  a  work  required  by  the  juncture  of  history  on  which 
they  fell.     The  story  of  the  Reformation,  for  example, 
cannot  be  read  by  a  devout  mind  without  wonder  at  the 
providence  by  which  such  great  men  as  Luther,  Zwingli, 
Calvin  and  Knox  were  simultaneously  raised  up  in  different 
parts  of  Europe  to  break  the  yoke  of  the  papacy  and  repub- 
lish  the  gospel  of  grace.     When  the  Evangelical  Revival, 
after  blessing  England,  was  about  to  break  into  Scotland 
and  end  the  dreary  reign  of  Moderatism,  there  was  raised 
up  in  Thomas  Chalmers  a  mind  of  such  capacity  as  com- 
pletely to  absorb  the  new  movement  into  itself,  and  of 
such  sympathy  and  influence  as  to  diffuse  it  to  every  cor- 
ner of  his  native  land. 

2.  This  impression  is  produced  by  no  life  more  than 
by  that  of  the  Apostle  Paul.     He  was  given  to  Christian- 

7 


8  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

ity  when  it  was  in  its  most  rudimentary  beginnings.  It 
was  not,  indeed,  feeble,  nor  can  any  mortal  man  be  spoken 
of  as  indispensable  to  it ;  for  it  contained  within  itself 
the  vigor  of  a  divine  and  immortal  existence,  which  could 
not  but  have  unfolded  itself  in  the  course  of  time.  But, 
if  we  recognize  that  God  makes  use  of  means  which  com- 
mend themselves  even  to  our  eyes  as  suited  to  the  ends  He 
has  in  view,  then  we  must  say  that  the  Christian  movement 
at  the  moment  when  Paul  appeared  upon  the  stage  was  in 
the  utmost  need  of  a  man  of  extraordinary  endowments, 
who,  becoming  possessed  with  its  genius,  should  incorpo- 
rate it  with  the  general  history  of  the  world ;  and  in  Paul 
it  found  the  man  it  needed. 

3.  A  Type  of  Christian  Character. — Christianity 
obtained  in  Paul  an  incomparable  type  of  Christian 
character.  It  already,  indeed,  possessed  the  perfect 
model  of  human  character  in  the  person  of  its  Founder. 
But  He  was  not  as  other  men,  because  from  the  beginning 
He  had  no  sinful  imperfection  to  struggle  with;  and 
Christianity  still  required  to  show  what  it  could  make  of 
imperfect  human  nature.  Paul  supplied  the  opportunity 
of  exhibiting  this.  He  was  naturally  of  immense  mental 
stature  and  force.  He  would  have  been  a  remarkable 
man  even  if  he  had  never  become  a  Christian.  The 
other  apostles  would  have  lived  and  died  in  the  obscurity 
of  Galilee  if  they  had  not  been  lifted  into  prominence  by 
the  Christian  movement ;  but  the  name  of  Saul  of  Tarsus 
would  have  been  remembered  still  in  some  character  or 
other  even  if  Christianity  had  never  existed.  Christianity 
got  the  opportunity  in  him  of  showing  to  the  world  the 
whole  force  it  contained.  Paul  was  aware  of  this  himself, 
though  he  expressed  it  with  perfect  modesty,  when  he  said, 
"For  this  cause  I  obtained  mercy,  that  in  me  as  chief 


HIS    PLACE    IN    HISTORY  9 

might  Jesus  Christ  show  forth  all  His  long-suffering  for 
an  ensample  of  them  who  should  hereafter  believe  on 
Him  to  everlasting  life." 

4.  His  conversion  proved  the  power  of  Christianity  to 
overcome  the  strongest  prejudices  and  to  stamp  its  own 
type  on  a  large  nature  by  a  revolution  both  instantaneous 
and  permanent.  Paul's  was  a  personality  so  strong  and 
original  that  no  other  man  could  have  been  less  expected 
to  sink  himself  in  another ;  but,  from  the  moment  when 
he  came  into  contact  with  Christ,  he  was  so  overmastered 
with  His  influence  that  he  never  afterward  had  any  other 
desire  than  to  be  the  mere  echo  and  reflection  of  Him  to 
the  world. 

But,  if  Christianity  showed  its  strength  in  making  so 
complete  a  conquest  of  Paul,  it  showed  its  worth  no  less 
in  the  kind  of  man  it  made  of  him  when  he  had  given 
himself  up  to  its  influence.  It  satisfied  the  needs  of  a 
peculiarly  hungry  nature,  and  never  to  the  close  cf  his 
life  did  he  betray  the  slightest  sense  that  this  satisfaction 
was  abating.  His  constitution  was  originally  compounded 
of  fine  materials,  but  the  spirit  of  Christ,  passing  into 
these,  raised  them  to  a  pitch  of  excellence  altogether 
unique. 

Nor  was  it  ever  doubtful  either  to  himself  or  to  others 
that  it  was  the  influence  of  Christ  which  made  him  what 
he  was.  The  truest  motto  for  his  life  would  be  his  own 
saying,  "I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  In- 
deed, so  perfectly  was  Christ  formed  in  him  that  we  can 
now  study  Christ's  character  in  his,  and  beginners  may 
perhaps  learn  even  more  of  Christ  from  studying  Paul's 
life  than  from  studying  Christ's  own.  In  Christ  Himself 
there  was  a  blending  and  softening  of  all  the  excellences 
which  makes  His  greatness  elude  the  glance  of  the  begin- 


10  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

ner,  just  as  the  very  perfection  of  Raphael's  painting 
makes  it  disappointing  to  an  untrained  eye ;  whereas  in 
Paul  a  few  of  the  greatest  elements  of  Christian  character 
were  exhibited  with  a  decisiveness  which  no  one  can  mis- 
take, just  as  the  most  prominent  characteristics  of  the 
painting  of  Rubens  can  be  appreciated  by  every  spectator. 

5.  A  Great  Thinker. — Christianity  obtained  in  Paul, 
secondly,  a  great  thinker.     This  it  specially  needed  at 
the  moment.      Christ  had  departed  from  the  world,  and 
those  whom  He  had  left  to  represent  Him  were  unlettered 
fishermen  and,  for  the  most  part,  men  of  no  intellectual 
mark.      In  one  sense  this  fact  reflects  a  peculiar  glory  on 
Christianity,  for  it  shows  that  it  did  not  owe  its  place  as 
one  of  the  great  influences  of  the  world  to  the  abilities  of 
its  human  representatives :    not  by  might  nor  by  power, 
but  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  was  Christianity  established  in 
the  earth.      Yet,  as  we  look  back  now,  we  can  clearly  see 
how  essential  it  was  that  an  apostle  of  a  different  stamp 
and  training  should  arise. 

6.  Christ  had  manifested  forth  the  glory  of  the  Father 
once  for  all  and  completed  his  atoning  work.     But  this 
was  not  enough.      It  was  necessary  that  the  meaning  of 
his  appearance  should  be  explained  to  the  world.     Who 
was  he  who  had  been  here?   what  precisely  was  it  he  had 
done?      To  these  questions  the  original  apostles  could 
give  brief  popular  answers ;    but  none  of  them  had  the 
intellectual  reach  or  the  educational  training  necessary  to 
put  the  answers  into  a  form  to  satisfy  the  intellect  of  the 
world.      Happily  it  is  not  essential  to  salvation  to  be 
able  to  answer  such  questions  with  scientific  accuracy. 
There  are  tens  of  thousands  who  know  and  believe  that 
Jesus  was  the  Son  of  God  and  died  to  take  away  sin  and, 


HIS    PLACE    IN    HISTORY  11 

trusting  to  Him  as  their  Saviour,  are  purified  by  ^aith, 
but  who  could  not  explain  these  statements  at  any  length 
without  falling  into  mistakes  in  almost  every  sentence. 
Yet,  if  Christianity  was  to  make  an  intellectual  as  well 
as  a  moral  conquest  of  the  world,  it  was  necessary  for  the 
Church  to  have  accurately  explained  to  her  the  full  glory 
of  her  Lord  and  the  meaning  of  his  saving  work. 

Of  course  Jesus  had  himself  had  in  his  mind  a  com- 
prehension both  of  what  he  was  and  of  what  he  was  doing 
which  was  luminous  as  the  sun.  But  it  was  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  aspects  of  his  earthly  ministry  that  he  could 
not  tell  all  his  mind  to  his  followers.  They  were  not 
able  to  bear  it ;  they  were  too  rude  and  limited  to  take  it 
in.  He  had  to  carry  his  deepest  thoughts  out  of  the  world 
with  him  unuttered,  trusting  with  a  sublime  faith  that 
the  Holy  Ghost  would  lead  his  Church  to  grasp  them  in 
the  course  of  its  subsequent  development.  Even  what  he 
did  utter  was  very  imperfectly  understood. 

There  was  one  mind,  it  is  true,  in  the  original  apos- 
tolic circle  of  the  finest  quality  and  capable  of  soaring 
into  the  rarest  altitudes  of  speculation.  The  words  of 
Christ  sank  into  the  mind  of  John  and,  after  lying  there 
for  half  a  century,  grew  up  into  the  wonderful  forms  we 
inherit  in  his  Gospel  and  Epistles.  But  even  the  mind 
of  John  was  not  equal  to  the  exigency  of  the  Church ;  it 
was  too  fine,  mystical,  unusual.  His  thoughts  to  this 
day  remain  the  property  only  of  the  few  finest  minds. 
There  was  needed  a  thinker  of  broader  and  more  massive 
make  to  sketch  the  first  outlines  of  Christian  doctrine ; 
and  he  was  found  in  Paul. 

7.  Paul  was  a  born  thinker.  His  mind  was  of 
majestic  breadth  and  force.  It  was  restlessly  busy, 
never  able  to  leave  any  object  with  which  it  had  to  deal 


12  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

until  it  had  pursued  it  back  to  its  remotest  causes  and 
forward  into  all  its  consequences.  It  was  not  enough  for 
him  to  know  that  Christ  was  the  Son  of  God :  he  had  to 
unfold  this  statement  into  its  elements  and  understand 
precisely  what  it  meant.  It  was  not  enough  for  him  to 
believe  that  Christ  died  for  sin :  he  had  to  go  farther  and 
inquire  why  it  was  necessary  that  He  should  do  so  and 
how  His  death  took  sin  away. 

But  not  only  had  he  from  nature  this  speculative  gift: 
his  talent  was  trained  by  education.  The  other  apostles 
were  unlettered  men ;  but  he  enjoyed  the  fullest  scholastic 
advantages  of  the  period.  In  the  rabbinical  school  he 
learned  how  to  arrange  and  state  and  defend  his  ideas. 
We  have  the  issue  of  all  this  in  his  Epistles,  which  con- 
tain the  best  explanation  of  Christianity  possessed  by  the 
world.  The  right  way  to  look  at  them  is  to  regard  them 
as  the  continuation  of  Christ's  own  teaching.  They 
contain  the  thoughts  which  Christ  carried  away  from  the 
earth  with  him  unuttered.  Of  course  Jesus  would  have 
uttered  them  differently  and  far  better.  Paul's  thoughts 
have  everywhere  the  coloring  of  his  own  mental  peculiar- 
ities. But  the  substance  of  them  is  what  Christ's  must 
have  been  if  he  had  himself  given  them  expression. 

8.  There  was  one  great  subject  especially  which  Christ 
had  to  leave  unexplained — his  own  death.  He  could  not 
explain  it  before  it  had  taken  place.  This  became  the 
leading  topic  of  Paul's  thinking — to  show  why  it  was 
needed  and  what  were  its  blessed  results.  But,  indeed^ 
there  was  no  aspect  of  the  appearance  of  Christ  into  which 
his  restlessly  inquiring  mind  did  not  penetrate.  His 
thirteen  Epistles,  when  arranged  in  chronological  order, 
show  that  his  mind  was  constantly  getting  deeper  and 
deeper  into  the  subject.  The  progress  of  his  thinking 


HIS    PLACE    IN    HISTORY  IS 

was  determined  partly  by  the  natural  progress  of  his  own 
advance  in  the  knowledge  of  Christ,  for  he  always  wrote 
straight  out  of  his  own  experience ;  and  partly  by  the 
various  forms  of  error  which  he  had  at  successive  periods 
to  encounter,  and  which  became  a  providential  means  of 
stimulating  and  developing  his  apprehension  of  the  truth, 
just  as  ever  since  in  the  Christian  Church  the  rise  of  error 
has  been  the  means  of  calling  forth  the  clearest  statements 
of  doctrine.  The  ruling  impulse,  however,  of  his  think- 
ing, as  of  his  life,  was  ever  Christ,  and  it  was  his  lifelong 
devotion  to  this  exhaustless  theme  that  made  him  the 
Thinker  of  Christianity. 

9.  The  Missionary  of  the  Gentiles. — Christianity 
obtained  in  Paul,  thirdly,  the  missionary  of  the  Gentiles. 
It  is  rare  to  find  the  highest  speculative  power  united 
with  great  practical  activity ;    but  these  were  united  in 
him.     He  was  not  only  the  Church's  greatest  thinker, 
but  the  very  foremost  worker  she  has  ever  possessed.     We 
have  been  considering  the  speculative  task  which  was 
awaiting  him  when  he  joined  the  Christian  community; 
but  there  was  a  no  less  stupendous  practical  task  awaiting 
him  too.     This  was  the  evangelization  of  the  Gentile 
world. 

10.  One  of  the  great  objects  of  the  appearance  of 
Christ  was  to  break  down  the  wall  of  separation  between 
Jew  and  Gentile  and    make  the  blessings  of   salvation 
the  property  of  all  men,  without  distinction  of  race  or 
language.      But  he  was  not  himself  permitted  to  carry 
this  change  into  practical  realization.      It  was  one  of  the 
strange  limitations  of  his  earthly  life  that  he  was  sent 
only  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.      It  can 
easily  be  imagined  how  congenial  a  task  it  would  have 


14  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

been  to  his  intensely  human  heart  to  carry  the  gospel  be- 
yond the  limits  of  Palestine  and  make  it  known  to  nation 
after  nation ;  and — if  it  be  not  too  bold  to  say  so — this 
would  certainly  have  been  his  chosen  career,  had  he  been 
spared.  But  he  was  cut  off  in  the  midst  of  his  days  and 
had  to  leave  this  task  to  his  followers. 

11.  Before  the  appearance  of  Paul  on  the  scene,  the 
execution  of  this  task  had  been  begun.  Jewish  prejudice 
had  been  partially  broken  down,  the  universal  character 
of  Christianity  had  been  in  some  measure  realized,  and 
Peter  had  admitted  the  first  Gentiles  into  the  Church  by 
baptism.  But  none  of  the  original  apostles  was  equal  to 
the  emergency.  None  of  them  was  large-minded  enough 
to  grasp  the  idea  of  the  perfect  equality  of  Jew  and 
Gentile  and  apply  it  without  flinching  in  all  its  practical 
consequences ;  and  none  of  them  had  the  combination  of 
gifts  necessary  to  attempt  the  conversion  of  the  Gentile 
world  on  a  large  scale.  They  were  Galilean  fishermen, 
fit  enough  to  teach  and  preach  within  the  bounds  of  their 
native  Palestine.  But  beyond  Palestine  lay  the  great 
world  of  Greece  and  Rome — the  world  of  vast  popula- 
tions, of  power  and  culture,  of  pleasure  and  business. 
It  needed  a  man  of  unlimited  versatility,  of  education, 
of  immense  human  sympathy  and  breadth,  to  go  out 
there  with  the  gospel  message — a  man  who  could  not 
only  be  a  Jew  to  the  Jews,  but  a  Greek  to  the  Greeks,  a 
Roman  to  the  Romans,  a  barbarian  to  the  barbarians — 
a  man  who  could  encounter  not  only  rabbis  in  their  syna- 
gogues, but  proud  magistrates  in  their  courts  and  phil- 
osophers in  the  haunts  of  learning — a  man  who  could 
face  travel  by  land  and  by  sea,  who  could  exhibit  pres- 
ence of  mind  in  every  variety  of  circumstances,  and 
would  be  cowed  by  no  difficulties.  No  man  of  this  size 


HIS    PLACE    IN    HISTORY  15 

belonged  to  the  original  apostolic  circle ;  but  Christian- 
ity needed  such  an  one,  and  he  was  found  in  Paul. 

12.  Originally  attached  more  strictly  than  any  of 
the  other  apostles  to  the  peculiarities  and  prejudices  of 
Jewish  exclusiveness,  he  cut  his  way  out  of  the  jungle 
of  these  prepossessions,  accepted  the  equality  of  all  men 
in  Christ,  and  applied  this  principle  relentlessly  in  all 
its  issues.  He  gave  his  heart  to  the  Gentile  mission, 
and  the  history  of  his  life  is  the  history  of  how  true  he 
was  to  his  vocation.  There  was  never  such  singleness 
of  eye  or  wholeness  of  heart.  There  was  never  such 
superhuman  and  untiring  energy.  There  was  never  such 
an  accumulation  of  difficulties  victoriously  met  and  of 
sufferings  cheerfully  borne  for  any  cause.  In  him  Jesus 
Christ  went  forth  to  evangelize  the  world,  making  use  of 
his  hands  and  feet,  his  tongue  and  brain  and  heart,  for 
doing  the  work  which  in  His  own  bodily  presence  He 
had  not  been  permitted  by  the  limits  of  His  mission  to 
accomplish. 


CHAPTER  II 

HIS    UNCONSCIOUS    PREPARATION 
FOR    HIS  WORK 


Paragraphs  13-36. 

14-16.  DATE   AND   PLACE   OP   BIRTH.     His 
of  Cities.     17,  18.   HOME. 

19-26.  EDUCATION.  19.  Roman  citizenship;  20.  Tent- 
making;  21,  22.  Knowledge  of  Greek  Literature;  23- 
26.  Rabbinical  Training.  Gamaliel.  Knowledge  of 
Old  Testament. 

27-30.  MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT. 
28.  The  Law;  29,  30.  Departure  from  and  return  to 
Jerusalem. 

31-33.  STATE  OP  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH. 
Stephen.  34-36.  THE  PERSECUTOR. 

13.  God's  Plan. — Persons  whose  conversion  takes 
place  after  they  are  grown  up  are  wont  to  look  back 
upon  the  period  of  their  life  which  has  preceded  this 
event  with  sorrow  and  shame  and  to  wish  that  an  obliter- 
ating hand  might  blot  the  record  of  it  out  of  existence. 
St.  Paul  felt  this  sentiment  strongly :  to  the  end  of  his 
days  he  was  haunted  by  the  specters  of  his  lost  yeaps,  and 
was  wont  to  say  that  he  was  the  least  of  all  the  apostles, 
who  was  not  worthy  to  be  called  an  apostle,  because  he 
had  persecuted  the  Church  of  God.  But  these  somber 
sentiments  are  only  partially  justifiable.  God's  purposes 
are  very  deep,  and  even  in  those  who  know  Him  not  He 
may  be  sowing  seeds  which  will  only  ripen  and  bear  fruit 
long  after  their  godless  career  is  over.  Paul  would  never 

16 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK   17 

have  been  the  man  he  became  or  have  done  the  work  he 
did,  if  he  had  not,  in  the  years  preceding  his  conversion, 
gone  through  a  course  of  preparation  designed  to  fit  him 
for  his  subsequent  career.  He  knew  not  what  he  was 
being  prepared  for;  his  own  intentions  about  his  future 
were  different  from  God's ;  but  there  is  a  divinity  which 
shapes  our  ends,  and  it  was  making  him  a  polished  shaft 
for  God's  quiver,  though  he  knew  it  not. 

14.  Birth  and  Birthplace. — The  date  of  Paul's 
birth  is  not  exactly  known,  but  it  can  be  settled  with  a 
closeness  of  approximation  which  is  sufficient  for  prac- 
tical purposes.  When  in  the  year  33  A.D.  those  who 
stoned  Stephen  laid  down  their  clothes  at  Paul's  feet,  he 
was  '  *  a  young  man. ' '  This  term  has,  indeed,  in  Greek 
as  much  latitude  as  in  English,  and  may  indicate  any 
age  from  something  under  twenty  to  something  over 
thirty.  In  this  case  it  probably  touched  the  latter  rather 
than  the  former  limit ;  for  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
at  this  time,  or  very  soon  after,  he  was  a  member  of  the 
Sanhedrin — an  office  which  no  one  could  hold  who  was 
under  thirty  years  of  age — and  the  commission  he  re- 
ceived from  the  Sanhedrin  immediately  afterward  to 
persecute  the  Christians  would  scarcely  have  been  en- 
trusted to  a  very  young  man.  About  thirty  years  after 
playing  this  sad  part  in  Stephen's  murder,  in  the  year 
62  A.D.,  he  was  lying  in  a  prison  in  Rome  awaiting 
sentence  of  death  for  the  same  cause  for  which  Stephen 
had  suffered,  and,  writing  one  of  the  last  of  his  Epistles, 
that  to  Philemon,  he  called  himself  an  old  man.  This 
term  also  is  one  of  great  latitude,  and  a  man  who  had 
gone  through  so  many  hardships  might  well  be  old  before 
his  time ;  yet  he  could  scarcely  have  taken  the  name  of 
"Paul  the  aged"  before  sixty  years  of  age. 


18  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

These  calculations  lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that  he 
was  born  about  the  same  time  as  Jesus.  When  the  boy 
Jesus  was  playing  in  the  streets  of  Nazareth,  the  boy  Paul 
was  playing  in  the  streets  of  his  native  town,  away  on 
the  other  side  of  the  ridges  of  Lebanon.  They  seemed 
likely  to  have  totally  drVerse  careers.  Yet,  by  the  mys- 
terious arrangement  of  Providence,  these  two  lives,  like 
streams  flowing  from  opposite  watersheds,  were  one  day, 
as  river  and  tributary,  to  mingle  together. 

15.  The  place  of  his  birth  was  Tarsus,  the  capital  of 
the  province  of  Cilicia,  in  the  southeast  of  Asia  Minor. 
It  stood  a  few  miles  from  the  coast,  in  the  midst  of  a 
fertile  plain,  and  was  built  upon  both  banks  of  the  river 
Cydnus,  which  descended  to  it  from  the  neighboring 
Taurus  Mountains,  on  the  snowy  peaks  of  which  the 
inhabitants  of  the  town  were  wont,  on  summer  evenings, 
to  watch  from  the  flat  roofs  of  their  houses  the  glow  of 
the  sunset.  Not  far  above  the  town  the  river  poured  over 
the  rocks  in  a  vast  cataract,  but  below  this  it  became 
navigable,  and  within  the  town  its  banks  were  lined  with 
wharves,  on  which  was  piled  the  merchandise  of  many 
countries,  while  sailors  and  merchants,  dressed  in  the 
costumes  and  speaking  the  languages  of  different  races, 
were  constantly  to  be  seen  in  the  streets.  The  town 
enjoyed  an  extensive  trade  in  timber,  with  which  the 
province  abounded,  and  in  the  long  fine  hair  of  the  goats 
kept  in  thousands  on  the  neighboring  mountains,  which 
was  made  into  a  coarse  kind  of  cloth  and  manufactured 
into  various  articles,  among  which  tents,  such  as  Paul 
was  afterward  employed  in  sewing,  formed  an  extensive 
article  of  merchandise  all  along  the  shores  of  the  Medi- 
terranean. Tarsus  was  also  the  center  of  a  large  trans- 
port trade;  for  behind  the  town  a  famous  pass,  called 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK   19 

the  Cilician  Gates,  led  up  through  the  mountains  to  the 
central  countries  of  Asia  Minor;  and  Tarsus  was  the 
depot  to  which  the  products  of  these  countries  were 
brought  down,  to  be  distributed  over  the  East  and  the 
West. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  city  were  numerous  and 
wealthy.  The  majority  of  them  were  native  Cilicians, 
but  the  wealthiest  merchants  were  Greeks.  The  prov- 
ince was  under  the  sway  of  the  Romans,  the  signs  of 
whose  sovereignty  could  not  be  absent  from  the  capital, 
although  Tarsus  itself  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  self-gov- 
ernment. The  number  and  variety  of  the  inhabitants 
were  still  further  increased  by  the  fact  that,  like  the  city 
of  Glasgow,  Tarsus  was  not  only  a  center  of  commerce,  but 
also  a  seat  of  learning.  It  was  one  of  the  three  princi- 
pal university  cities  of  the  period,  the  other  two  being 
Athens  and  Alexandria ;  and  it  was  said  to  surpass  its 
rivals  in  intellectual  eminence.  Students  from  many 
countries  were  to  be  seen  in  its  streets,  a  sight  which 
could  not  but  awaken  in  youthful  minds  thoughts  about 
the  value  and  the  aims  of  learning. 

16.  Who  does  not  see  how  fit  a  place  this  was  for 
the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles  to  be  born  in?  As  he  grew 
up,  he  was  being  unawares  prepared  to  encounter  men  of 
every  class  and  race,  to  sympathize  with  human  nature 
in  all  its  varieties,  and  to  look  with  tolerance  upon  the 
most  diverse  habits  and  customs.  In  after  life  he  was 
always  a  lover  of  cities.  Whereas  his  Master  avoided 
Jerusalem  and  loved  to  teach  on  the  mountainside  or 
the  shore  of  the  lake,  Paul  was  constantly  moving  from 
one  great  city  to  another.  Antioch,  Ephesus,  Athens, 
Corinth,  Rome,  the  capitals  of  the  ancient  world,  were 
the  scenes  of  his  activity.  The  words  of  Jesus  are  redo- 


20  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

lent  of  the  country,  and  teem  with  pictures  of  its  «till 
beauty  or  homely  toil — the  lilies  of  the  field,  the  sheep 
following  the  shepherd,  the  sower  in  the  furrow,  the 
fishermen  drawing  their  nets ;  but  the  language  of  Paul 
is  impregnated  with  the  atmosphere  of  the  city  and  alive 
with  the  tramp  and  hurry  of  the  streets.  His  imagery 
is  borrowed  from  scenes  of  human  energy  and  monuments 
of  cultivated  life — the  soldier  in  full  armor,  the  athlete 
in  the  arena,  the  building  of  houses  and  temples,  the 
triumphal  procession  of  the  victorious  general.  So  last- 
ing are  the  associations  of  the  boy  in  the  life  of  the  man. 

17.  Paul's  Home. — Paul  had  a  certain  pride  in  the 
place  of  his  birth,  as  he  showed  by  boasting  on  one  occa- 
sion that  he  was  a  citizen  of  no  mean  city.  He  had  a 
heart  formed  by  nature  to  feel  the  warmest  glow  of 
patriotism.  Yet  it  was  not  for  Cilicia  and  Tarsus  that 
this  fire  burned.  He  was  an  alien  in  the  land  of  his 
birth.  His  father  was  one  of  those  numerous  Jews  who 
were  scattered  in  that  age  over  the  cities  of  the  Gentile 
world,  engaged  in  trade  and  commerce.  They  had  left 
the  Holy  Land,  but  they  did  not  forget  it.  They  never 
coalesced  with  the  populations  among  which  they  dwelt 
but,  in  dress,  food,  religion  and  many  other  particulars 
remained  a  peculiar  people.  As  a  rule,  indeed,  they 
were  less  rigid  in  their  religious  views  and  more  tolerant 
of  foreign  customs  than  those  Jews  who  remained  in 
Palestine.  But  Paul's  father  was  not  one  who  had  given 
way  to  laxity.  He  belonged  to  the  straitest  sect  of  his 
religion.  It  is  probable  that  he  had  not  left  Palestine 
long  before  his  son's  birth,  for  Paul  calls  himself  a 
Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews — a  name  which  seems  to  have 
belonged  only  to  the  Palestinian  Jews  and  to  those  whose 
connection  with  Palestine  had  continued  very  close. 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK  21 

Of  his  mother  we  hear  absolutely  nothing,  but  every- 
thing seems  to  indicate  that  the  home  in  which  he  was 
brought  up  was  one  of  those  out  of  which  nearly  all 
eminent  religious  teachers  have  sprung — a  home  of  piety, 
of  character,  perhaps  of  somewhat  stern  principle,  and 
of  strong  attachment  to  the  peculiarities  of  a  religious 
people.  He  was  imbued  with  its  spirit.  Although  he 
could  not  but  receive  innumerable  and  imperishable  im- 
pressions from  the  city  he  was  born  in,  the  land  and  the 
city  of  his  heart  were  Palestine  and  Jerusalem ;  and  the 
heroes  of  his  young  imagination  were  not  Curtius  and 
Horatius,  Hercules  and  Achilles,  but  Abraham  and 
Joseph,  Moses  and  David  and  Ezra.  As  he  looked  back 
on  the  past,  it  was  not  over  the  confused  annals  of  Cilicia 
that  he  cast  his  eyes,  but  he  gazed  up  the  clear  stream  of 
Jewish  history  to  its  sources  in  Ur  of  the  Chaldees ;  and. 
when  he  thought  of  the  future,  the  vision  which  rose 
on  him  was  the  kingdom  of  the  Messiah,  enthroned  in 
Jerusalem  and  ruling  the  nations  with  a  rod  of  iron. 

18.  The  feeling  of  belonging  to  a  spiritual  aristoc- 
racy, elevated  above  the  majority  of  those  among  whom 
he  lived,  would  be  deepened  in  him  by  what  he  saw  of 
the  religion  of  the  surrounding  population.  Tarsus  was 
the  center  of  a  species  of  Baal-worship  of  an  imposing 
but  unspeakably  degrading  character,  and  at  certain 
seasons  of  the  year  it  was  the  scene  of  festivals,  which 
were  frequented  by  the  whole  population  of  the  neighbor- 
ing regions,  and  were  accompanied  with  orgies  of  a 
degree  of  moral  abominableness  happily  beyond  the 
reach  even  of  our  imaginations.  Of  course  a  boy  could 
not  see  the  depths  of  this  mystery  of  iniquity,  but  he 
could  see  enough  to  make  him  turn  from  idolatry  with 
the  scorn  peculiar  to  his  nation,  and  to  make  him  regard 


9£  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

the  little  synagogue  where  his  family  worshiped  the 
Holy  One  of  Israel  as  far  more  glorious  than  the  gorgeous 
temples  of  the  heathen ;  and  perhaps  to  these  early  expe- 
riences we  may  trace  back  in  some  degree  those  convic- 
tions of  the  depths  to  which  human  nature  can  fall  and 
its  need  of  an  omnipotent  redeeming  force  which  after- 
ward formed  so  fundamental  a  part  of  his  theology  and 
gave  such  a  stimulus  to  his  work. 

19.  Trade. — The  time  at  length  arrived  for  deciding 
what  occupation  the  boy  was  to  follow — a  momentous 
crisis  in  every  life — and  in  this  case  much  was  involved 
in  the  decision.  Perhaps  the  most  natural  career  for 
him  would  have  been  that  of  a  merchant ;  for  his  father 
was  engaged  in  trade,  the  busy  city  offered  splendid  prizes 
to  mercantile  ambition,  and  the  boy's  own  energy  would 
have  guaranteed  success.  Besides,  his  father  had  an  ad- 
vantage to  give  him  specially  useful  to  a  merchant: 
though  a  Jew,  he  was  a  Roman  citizen,  and  this  right 
would  have  given  his  son  protection,  into  whatever  part 
of  the  Roman  world  he  might  have  had  occasion  to 
travel.  How  the  father  got  this  right  we  cannot  tell ; 
it  might  be  bought,  or  won  by  distinguished  service  to 
the  state,  or  acquired  in  several  other  ways ;  at  all  events 
his  son  was  free-born.  It  was  a  valuable  privilege,  and 
one  which  was  to  prove  of  great  use  to  Paul,  though  not 
in  the  way  in  which  his  father  might  have  been  expected 
to  desire  him  to  make  use  of  it.  But  it  was  decided  that 
he  was  not  to  be  a  merchant.  The  decision  may  have 
been  due  to  his  father's  strong  religious  views,  or  his 
mother's  pious  ambition,  or  his  own  predilections;  but 
it  was  resolved  that  he  should  go  to  college  and  become 
a  rabbi — that  is,  a  minister,  a  teacher  and  a  lawyer  all 
in  one.  It  was  a  wise  decision  in  view  of  the  boy's  spirit 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK   23 

and   capabilities,   and    it  turned    out   to  be   of  infinite 
moment  for  the  future  of  mankind. 

20.  But,  although  he  thus  escaped  the  chances  which 
seemed  likely  to  drift  him  into  a  secular  calling,  yet, 
before  going  away  to  prepare  for  the  sacred  profession, 
he  was  to  get  some  insight  into  business  life ;  for  it  was  a 
rule  among  the  Jews  that  every  boy,  whatever  might  be 
the  profession  he  was  to  follow,  should  learn  a  trade,  as  a 
resource  in  time  of  need.     This  was  a  rule  with  wisdom 
in  it ;  for  it  gave  employment  to  the  young  at  an  age 
when  too  much  leisure  is  dangerous,  and  acquainted  the 
wealthy  and  the  learned  in  some  degree  with  the  feelings 
of  those  who  have  to  earn  their  bread  with  the  sweat  of 
their  brow.     The  trade  which  he  was  put  to  was  the 
commonest  one  in  Tarsus — the  making  of  tents  from  the 
goat's-hair  cloth  for  which  the  district  was  celebrated. 
Little  did  he  or  his  father  think,  when  he  began  to  handle 
the  disagreeable  material,  of  what  importance  this  handi- 
craft was  to  be  to  him  in  subsequent  years :  it  became 
the  means  of  his  support  during  his  missionary  journeys, 
and,  at  a  time  when  it  was  essential  that  the  propagators 
of  Christianity  should    be  above  the  suspicion  of  selfish 
motives,  enabled  him  to  maintain  himself  in  a  position 
of  noble  independence. 

21.  Education. — It   is   a   question   natural   to  ask, 
whether,  before  leaving  home  to  go  and  get  his  training 
as   a   rabbi,  Paul   attended   the    University   of   Tarsus. 
Did  he  drink  at  the  wells  of  wisdom  which  flow  from 
Mount  Helicon  before  going  to  sit  by  those  which  spring 
from  Mount  Zion  ?     From  the  fact  that  he  makes  two 
or  three  quotations  from  the   Greek  poets  it  has  been 
inferred  that  he  was  acquainted  with  the  whole  literature 


24  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

of  Greece.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  pointed 
out  that  his  quotations  are  brief  and  commonplace,  such 
as  any  man  who  spoke  Greek  would  pick  up  and  use 
occasionally;  and  the  style  and  vocabulary  of  his 
Epistles  are  not  those  of  the  models  of  Greek  literature, 
but  of  the  Septuagint,  the  Greek  version  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures,  which  was  then  in  universal  use  among  the 
Jews  of  the  Dispersion.  Probably  his  father  would  have 
considered  it  sinful  to  allow  his  son  to  attend  a  heathen 
university.  Yet  it  is  not  likely  that  he  grew  up  in  a 
great  seat  of  learning  without  receiving  any  influence 
from  the  academic  tone  of  the  place.  His  speech  at 
Athens  shows  that  he  was  able,  when  he  chose,  to  wield 
a  style  much  more  stately  than  that  of  his  writings,  and 
so  keen  a  mind  was  not  likely  to  remain  in  total  igno- 
rance of  the  great  monuments  of  the  language  which  he 
spoke. 

22.  There  were  other    impressions,   too,   which    the 
learned  Tarsus  probably  made  upon  him :  its  university 
was  famous  for  those  petty  disputes  and  rivalries  which 
sometimes  ruffle  the  calm  of  academical  retreats ;  and  it 
is  possible  that  the  murmur  of  these,  with  which  the  air- 
was  often  filled,  may  have  given  the  first  impulse  to  that 
scorn  for  the  tricks  of  the  rhetorician  and  the  windy  dis- 
putations of  the  sophist  which  form  so  marked  a  feature 
in  some  of  his  writings.     The  glances  of  young  eyes  are 
clear  and  sure,  and  even  as  a  boy  he  may  have  perceived 
how  small  may  be  the  souls  of  men  and  how  mean  their 
lives,  when  their  mouths  are  filled  with  the  finest  phrase- 
ology. 

23.  The  college  for  the  education  of  Jewish  rabbis 
was  in  Jerusalem,  and  thither  Paul  was  sent  about  the 
age  of  thirteen.     His  arrival  in  the  Holy  City  may  have 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK  25 

happened  in  the  same  year  in  which  Jesus,  at  the  age  of 
twelve,  first  visited  it,  and  the  overpowering  emotions 
of  the  boy  from  Nazareth  at  the  first  sight  of  the  capital 
of  his  race  may  be  taken  as  an  index  of  the  unrecorded 
experience  of  the  boy  from  Tarsus.  To  every  Jewish 
child  of  a  religious  disposition  Jerusalem  was  the  center 
of  all  things ;  the  footsteps  of  prophets  and  kings  echoed 
in  the  streets ;  memories  sacred  and  sublime  clung  to  its 
walls  and  buildings;  and  it  shone  in  the  glamor  of 
illimitable  hopes. 

24.  It   chanced    that   at    this   time   the   college   of 
Jerusalem  was  presided  over  by  one  of  the  most  noted 
teachers    the    Jews    have    ever    possessed.     This      was 
Gamaliel,   at  whose  feet  Paul  tells  us  he  was  brought 
up.      He  was   called  by  his  contemporaries  the  Beauty 
of  the  Law,  and  is  still  remembered  among  the  Jews  as 
the  Great  Rabbi.      He  was  a  man  of  lofty  character  and 
enlightened  mind,  a  Pharisee  strongly  attached  to  the 
traditions  of  the  fathers,  yet  not  intolerant  or  hostile  to 
Greek  culture,  as  were  some  of  the  narrower  Pharisees. 
The  influence  of  such  a  man  on  an  open  mind  like  Paul's 
must  have  been  very  great ;  and,  although  for  a  time  the 
pupil  became  an  intolerant  zealot,  yet  the  master's  ex- 
ample may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  conquest 
he  finally  won  over  prejudice. 

25.  The  course  of  instruction  which  a  rabbi  had  to 
undergo   was    lengthened    and   peculiar.       It   consisted 
entirely  of  the  study  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  comments 
of  the  sages  and  masters  upon  them.      The  words  of 
ScriDture  and  the  sayings  of  the  wise  were  committed 
to  memory ;  discussions  were  carried  on  about  disputed 
points;    and   by   a  rapid  fire  of   questions,    which   the 
scholars  were  allowed  to  put  as  well  as  the  masters,  the 


26  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

wits  of  the  students  were  sharpened  and  their  views 
enlarged.  The  outstanding  qualities  of  Paul's  intellect, 
which  were  conspicuous  in  his  subsequent  life — his  mar- 
velous memory,  the  keenness  of  his  logic,  the  super- 
abundance of  his  ideas,  and  his  original  way  of  taking 
up  every  subject — first  displayed  themselves  in  this 
school,  and  excited,  we  may  well  believe,  the  warm 
interest  of  his  teacher. 

26.  He  himself  learned  much  here  which  was  of 
great  moment  in  his  subsequent  career.  Although  he 
was  to  be  specially  the  missionary  of  the  Gentiles,  he 
was  also  a  great  missionary  to  his  own  people.  In  every 
city  he  visited  where  there  were  Jews  he  made  his  first 
public  appearance  in  the  synagogue.  There  his  train- 
ing as  a  rabbi  secured  him  an  opportunity  of  speaking, 
and  his  familiarity  with  Jewish  modes  of  thought  and 
reasoning  enabled  him  to  address  his  audiences  in  the 
way  best  fitted  to  secure  their  attention.  His  knowledge 
of  the  Scriptures  enabled  him  to  adduce  proofs  from  an 
authority  which  his  hearers  acknowledged  to  be  supreme. 

Besides,  he  was  destined  to  be  the  great  theologian 
of  Christianity  and  the  principal  writer  of  the  New 
Testament.  Now  the  New  grew  out  of  the  Old ;  the  one 
is  in  all  its  parts  the  prophecy  and  the  other  the  fulfill- 
ment. But  it  required  a  mind  saturated  not  only  with 
Christianity,  but  with  the  Old  Testament,  to  bring  this 
out ;  and,  at  the  age  when  the  memory  is  most  retentive, 
Paul  acquired  such  a  knowledge  of  the  Old  Testament 
that  everything  it  contains  was  at  his  command:  its 
phraseology  became  the  language  of  his  thinking;  he 
literally  writes  in  quotations,  and  he  quotes  from  all 
parts  with  equal  facility — from  the  Law,  the  Prophets, 
and  the  Psalms.  Thus  was  the  warrior  equipped  with 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK  27 

the  armor  and  the  weapons  of  the  Spirit  before  he  knew 
in  what  cause  he  was  to  use  them. 


27.  His  Religious  Life. — Meantime  what  was  his 
moral  and  religious  state?  He  was  learning  to  be  a 
religious  teacher;  was  he  himself  religious?  Not  all 
who  are  sent  to  college  by  their  parents  to  prepare  for 
the  sacred  office  are  so,  and  in  every  city  of  the  world 
the  path  of  youth  is  beset  with  temptations  which  may 
ruin  life  at  its  very  beginning.  Some  of  the  greatest 
teachers  of  the  Church,  such  as  St.  Augustine,  have  had 
to  look  back  on  half  their  life  blotted  and  scarred  with 
vice  or  crime.  No  such  fall  defaced  Paul's  early  years. 
Whatever  struggles  with  passion  may  have  raged  in  his 
own  breast,  his  conduct  was  always  pure.  Jerusalem 
was  no  very  favorable  place,  in  that  age,  for  virtue.  It 
was  the  Jerusalem  against  whose  external  sanctity,  but 
internal  depravity,  our  Lord  a  few  years  afterward 
hurled  such  withering  invectives ;  it  was  the  very  seat  of 
hypocrisy,  where  an  able  youth  might  easily  have  learned 
how  to  win  the  rewards  of  religion,  while  escaping  its 
burdens.  But  Paul  was  preserved  amidst  these  perils, 
and  could  afterward  claim  that  he  had  lived  in  Jerusalem 
from  the  first  in  all  good  conscience. 

28.  He  had  brought  with  him  from  home  the  convic- 
tion, which  forms  the  basis  of  a  religious  life,  that  the 
one  prize  which  makes  life  worth  living  is  the  love  and 
favor  of  God.  This  conviction  grew  into  a  passionate 
longing  as  he  advanced  in  years,  and  he  asked  his  teachers 
how  the  prize  was  to  be  won.  Their  answer  was  ready 
— By  the  keeping  of  the  law.  It  was  a  terrible  answer ; 
for  the  Law  meant  not  only  what  we  understand  by  the 
term,  but  also  the  ceremonial  law  of  Moses  and  the  thou- 


28  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

sand  and  one  rules  added  to  it  by  the  Jewish  teachers, 
the  observance  of  which  made  life  a  purgatory  to  a  tender 
conscience. 

But  Paul  was  not  the  man  to  shrink  from  difficulties. 
He  had  set  his  heart  upon  winning  God's  favor,  without 
which  this  life  appeared  to  him  a  blank  arid  eternity  the 
blackness  of  darkness;  and,  if  this  was  the  way  to  the 
goal,  he  was  willing  to  tread  it.  Not  only,  however, 
were  his  personal  hopes  involved  in  this,  the  hopes  of 
his  nation  depended  on  it  too ;  for  it  was  the  universal 
belief  of  his  people  that  the  Messiah  would  only  come 
to  a  nation  keeping  the  law,  and  it  was  even  said  that, 
if  one  man  kept  it  perfectly  for  a  single  day,  his  merit 
would  bring  to  the  earth  the  King  for  whom  they  were 
waiting.  Paul's  rabbinical  training,  then,  culminated 
in  the  desire  to  win  this  prize  of  righteousness,  and  he 
left  the  halls  of  sacred  learning  with  this  as  the  purpose 
of  his  life.  The  lonely  student's  resolution  was  momen- 
tous for  the  world ;  for  he  was  first  to  prove  amidst  secret 
agonies  that  this  way  of  salvation  was  false,  and  then  to 
teach  his  discovery  to  mankind. 

29.  At  Jerusalem. — We  cannot  tell  in  what  year 
Paul's  education  at  the  college  of  Jerusalem  was  finished 
or  where  he  went  immediately  afterward.  The  young 
rabbis,  after  completing  their  studies,  scattered  in  the 
same  way  as  our  own  divinity  students  do,  and  began 
practical  work  in  different  parts  of  the  Jewish  world. 
He  may  have  gone  back  to  his  native  Cilicia  and  held 
office  in  some  synagogue  there.  At  all  events,  he  was 
for  some  years  at  a  distance  from  Jerusalem  and  Pales- 
tine; for  these  were  the  very  years  in  which  fell  the 
movement  of  John  the  Baptist  and  the  ministry  of  Jesus, 
and  it  is  certain  that  Paul  could  not  have  been  in  the 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK  29 

vicinity  without  being  involved  ia  both  of  these  move- 
ments either  as  a  friend  or  as  a  foe. 

30.  But  before  long  he  returned  to  Jerusalem.  It 
was  as  natural  for  the  highest  rabbinical  talent  to  gravi- 
tate in  those  times  to  Jerusalem  as  it  is  for  the  highest 
literary  and  commercial  talent  to  giavitate  in  our  day  to 
the  metropolis.  He  arrived  in  the  capital  of  Judaism  very 
soon  after  the  death  of  Jesus ;  and  ve  can  easily  imagine 
the  representations  of  that  event  anc  of  the  career  thereby 
terminated  which  he  would  receivj  from  his  Pharisaic 
friends. 

We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  tVat  as  yet  he  had  any 
doubts  about  his  own  religion.  We  gather,  indeed,  from 
his  writings  that  he  had  already  passed  through  severe 
mental  conflicts.  Although  the  coiviction  still  stood 
fast  in  his  mind  that  the  blessednes  of  life  was  attain- 
able only  in  the  favor  of  God,  y^t  his  efforts  to  reach 
this  coveted  position  by  the  obsejvance  of  the  law  had 
not  satisfied  him.  On  the  conbary,  the  more  he  strove 
to  keep  the  law  the  more  active  became  the  motions  of 
sin  within  him ;  his  conscience  v&s  becoming  more  op- 
pressed with  the  sense  of  guilt,  and  the  peace  of  a  soul 
at  rest  in  God  was  a  prize  which  eluded  his  grasp. 

Still  he  did  not  question  the  teaching  of  the  syna- 
gogue. To  him  as  yet  this  vras  of  one  piece  with  the 
history  of  the  Old  Testament  whence  looked  down  on 
him  the  figures  of  the  sainb  and  prophets,  which  were 
a  guarantee  that  the  system  they  represented  must  be 
divine,  and  behind  which  he  saw  the  God  of  Israel  re- 
vealing himself  in  the  gHng  of  the  law.  The  reason 
why  he  had  not  attained  o  peace  and  fellowship  with 
God  was,  he  believed,  bemuse  he  had  not  struggled 
enough  with  the  evil  of  hi&  nature  or  honored  enough 


30  THE  LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

the  precepts  of  the  hw.  Was  there  no  service  by  which 
he  could  make  up  fcr  all  deficiencies  and  win  that  grace 
at  last  in  which  the  great  of  old  had  stood  ?  This  was 
the  temper  of  mind  Li  which  he  returned  to  Jerusalem, 
and  learned  with  astonishment  and  indignation  of  the 
rise  of  a  sect  which  believed  that  Jesus  who  had  been 
crucified  was  the  Mesiah  of  the  Jewish  people. 

31.  State  of  the  Christian  Church. — Christianity 
was  as  yet  only  two  «r  three  years  old,  and  was  growing 
very  quietly  in  Jerisalem.  Although  those  who  had 
heard  it  preached  at  Pentecost  had  carried  the  news  of 
it  to  their  homes  in  rany  quarters,  its  public  representa- 
tives had  not  yet  let  the  city  of  its  birth.  At  first  the 
authorities  had  beer  inclined  to  persecute  it,  and  checked 
its  teachers  when  they  appeared  in  public.  But  they 
had  changed  their  ninds  and,  acting  under  the  advice  of 
Gamaliel,  resolved  to  neglect  it,  believing  that  it  would 
die  out,  if  let  alone.  The  Christians,  on  the  other  hand, 
gave  as  little  offence  a>  possible ;  in  the  externals  of  re- 
ligion they  continued  :o  be  strict  Jews  and  zealous  of  the 
law,  attending  the  temple  worship,  observing  the  Jewish 
ceremonies  and  respecting  the  ecclesiastical  authorities. 

It  was  a  kind  of  trace,  which  allowed  Christianity  a 
little  space  for  secret  growtli.  In  their  upper  rooms  the 
brethren  met  to  break  bretd  and  pray  to  their  ascended 
Lord.  It  was  the  most  beautiful  spectacle.  The  new 
faith  had  alighted  among  them  like  an  angel,  and  was 
shedding  purity  on  their  souls  from  its  wings  and  breath- 
ing over  their  humble  gatherings  the  spirit  of  peace. 
Their  love  to  each  other  was  mbounded ;  they  were  filled 
with  the  inspiring  sense  of  discovery ;  and,  as  often  as 
they  met,  their  invisible  L>rd  was  in  their  midst.  It 
was  like  heaven  upon  eartl.  While  Jerusalem  around 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK   31 

them  was  going  on  in  its  ordinary  course  of  worldliness 
and  ecclesiastical  asperity,  these  few  humble  souls  were 
felicitating  themselves  with  a  secret  which  they  knew  to 
contain  within  it  the  blessedness  of  mankind  and  the 
future  of  the  world. 

32.  But  the  truce  could  not  last,  and  these  scenes  of 
peace  were  soon  to  be  invaded  with  terror  and  bloodshed. 
Christianity  could  not  keep  such  a  truce ;  for  there  is  in 
it  a  world-conquering  force,  which  impels  it  at  all  risks 
to  propagate  itself,  and  the  fermentation  of  the  new  wine 
of  gospel  liberty  was  sure  sooner  or  later  to  burst  the 
forms  of  the  Jewish  law. 

At  length  a  man  arose  in  the  Church  in  whom  these 
aggressive  tendencies  embodied  themselves.  This  was 
Stephen,  one  of  the  seven  deacons  who  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  watch  over  the  temporal  affairs  of  the  Chris- 
tian society.  He  was  a  man  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and 
possessed  of  capabilities  which  the  brevity  of  his  career 
only  permitted  to  suggest  but  not  to  develop  themselves. 
He  went  from  synagogue  to  synagogue,  preaching  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus  and  announcing  the  advent  of  free- 
dom from  the  yoke  of  the  law.  Champions  of  Jewish 
orthodoxy  encountered  him,  but  were  not  able  to  with- 
stand his  eloquence  and  holy  zeal.  Foiled  in  argument, 
they  grasped  at  other  weapons,  stirring  up  the  authori- 
ties and  the  populace  to  murderous  fanaticism. 

33.  Stephen. — One  of  the  synagogues  in  which  these 
disputations  took  place  was  that  of  the  Cilicians,  the 
countrymen  of  Paul.     May  he  have  been  a  rabbi  in  this 
gynagogue  and  one  of  Stephen's  opponents  in  argument  ? 
At  all  events,  when  the  argument  of  logic  was  exchanged 
for  that   of  violence,  he  was  in  the  front.     When  the 


S2  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

witnesses  who  cast  the  first  stones  at  Stephen  were  strip- 
ping for  their  work,  they  laid  down  their  garments  at 
his  feet.  There,  on  the  margin  of  that  wild  scene,  in 
the  field  of  judicial  murder,  we  see  his  figure,  standing 
a  little  apart  and  sharply  outlined  against  the  mass  of 
persecutors  unknown  to  fame — the  pile  of  many-colored 
robes  at  his  feet,  and  his  eyes  bent  upon  the  holy  martyr, 
who  is  kneeling  in  the  article  of  death  and  praying: 
"Lord,  lay  not  this  sin  to  their  charge." 

34.  The  Persecutor. — His  zeal  on  this  occasion 
brought  Paul  prominently  under  the  notice  of  the 
authorities.  It  probably  procured  him  a  seat  in  the 
Sanhedrin,  where  we  find  him  soon  afterward  giving  his 
vote  against  the  Christians.  At  all  events,  it  led  to  his 
being  entrusted  with  the  work  of  utterly  uprooting  Chris- 
tianity, which  the  authorities  now  resolved  upon.  He 
accepted  their  proposal ;  for  he  believed  it  to  be  God's 
work.  He  saw  more  clearly  than  any  one  else  what  was 
the  drift  of  Christianity ;  and  it  seemed  to  him  destined, 
if  unchecked,  to  overturn  all  that  he  considered  most 
sacred.  The  repeal  of  the  law  was  in  his  eyes  the  oblit- 
eration of  the  one  way  of  salvation,  and  faith  in  a  cruci- 
fied Messiah  blasphemy  against  the  divinest  hope  of 
Israel.  Besides,  he  had  a  deep  personal  interest  in  the 
task.  Hitherto  he  had  been  striving  to  please  God,  but 
always  felt  his  efforts  to  come  short ;  here  was  a  chance 
of  making  up  for  all  arrears  by  one  splendid  act  of 
service.  This  was  the  iron  of  agony  in  his  soul  which 
gave  edge  and  energy  to  his  zeal.  In  any  case  he  was 
not  a  man  to  do  things  by  halves ;  and  he  flung  himself 
headlong  into  his  task. 

&5,  Terrible  were  the  scenes  which  ensued.     He  flew 


UNCONSCIOUS  PREPARATION  FOR  WORK   33 

from  synagogue  to  synagogue,  and  from  house  to  house, 
dragging  forth  men  and  women,  who  were  cast  into 
prison  and  punished.  Some  appear  to  have  been  put  to 
death,  and— darkest  trait  of  all — others  were  compelled 
to  blaspheme  the  name  of  the  Saviour.  The  Church  at 
Jerusalem  was  broken  in  pieces,  and  such  of  its  members 
as  escaped  the  rage  of  the  persecutor  were  scattered  over 
the  neighboring  provinces  and  countries. 

36.  It  may  seem  too  venturesome  to  call  this  the  last 
stage  of  Paul's  unconscious  preparation  for  his  apostolic 
career.  But  so  indeed  it  was.  In  entering  on  the  career 
of  a  persecutor  he  was  going  on  straight  in  the  line  of 
the  creed  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up;  and  this 
was  its  reduction  to  absurdity.  Besides,  through  the 
gracious  working  of  Him  whose  highest  glory  it  is  out  of 
evil  still  to  bring  forth  good,  there  sprang  out  of  these 
sad  doings  in  the  mind  of  Paul  an  intensity  of  humility, 
a  willingness  to  serve  even  the  least  of  the  brethren  of 
those  whom  he  had  abused,  and  a  zeal  to  redeem  lost 
time  by  the  parsimonious  use  of  what  was  left,  which 
became  permanent  spurs  to  action  in  his  subsequent 
career. 


CHAPTER   III 
HIS  CONVERSION 


Paragraphs  37-50. 

37, 38.  Severity  of  the  Persecution. 

39-42.  Kicking  against  the  Goad. 

43, 44.  The  Vision  of  Christ. 

45-48.  Effect  of  his  Conversion  on  his  Thinking. 

49, 50.  Its  Effect  on  his  Destiny. 

37.  Severity  of  the  Persecution. — It  was  the  per- 
secutor's hope  utterly  to  exterminate  Christianity.     But 
little  did  he  understand  its  genius.      It  thrives  on  perse- 
cution.     Prosperity  has  often  been  fatal  to  it,  persecution 
never.      "They  that  were  scattered  abroad  went  every- 
where preaching  the  word."     Hitherto  the  Church  had 
been  confined  within  the  walls  of  Jerusalem ;  but  now  all 
over  Judaea  and  Samaria,  and  in  distant  Phoenicia  and 
Syria,  the  beacon  of  the  gospel  began  in  many  a  town  and 
village  to  twinkle  through  the  darkness,  and  twos  and 
threes  met  together  in  upper  rooms  to  impart  to  each 
other  their  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost. 

38.  We  can  imagine  with  what  rage  the  tidings  of 
these  outbreaks  of  the  fanaticism  which  he  had  hoped  to 
stamp  out  would  fill  the  persecutor.      But  he  was  not  the 
person  to  be  balked,  and  he  resolved  to  hunt  up  the  ob- 
jects of  his  hatred  even  in  their  most  obscure  and  distant 
hiding-places.       In  one   strange  city   after   another   he 
accordingly  appeared,  armed  with  the  apparatus  of  the 
inquisitor,  to  carry  his  sanguinary  purpose  out.     Having 

34 


HIS    CONVERSION  85 

heard  that  Damascus,  the  capital  of  Syria,  was  one  of 
the  places  where  the  fugitives  had  taken  refuge,  and  that 
they  were  carrying  on  their  propaganda  among  the  nu- 
merous Jews  of  that  city,  he  went  to  the  high  priest,  who 
had  jurisdiction  over  the  Jews  outside  as  well  as  inside 
Palestine,  and  got  letters  empowering  him  to  seize  and 
bind  and  bring  to  Jerusalem  all  of  the  new  way  of  think- 
ing whom  he  might  find  there. 

39.  Kicking  Against  the  Goad. — As  we  see  him 
start  on  this  journey,  which  was  to  be  so  momentous,  we 
naturally  ask  what  was  the  state  of  his  mind.      His  was 
a  noble  nature  and  a  tender  heart ;  but  the  work  he  was 
engaged  in  might  be  supposed  to  be  congenial  only  to 
the  most  brutal  of  mankind.      Had  his  mind,  then,  been 
visited  with   no  compunctions?     Apparently  not.      We 
are  told  that,  as  he  was  ranging  through  strange  cities 
in  pursuit  of  his  victims,  he  was  exceedingly  mad  against 
them ;  and,   as  he  was  setting  out  to  Damascus,  he  was 
still  breathing  out  threatenings  and  slaughter.      He  was 
sheltered  against  doubt  by  his  reverence  for  the  objects 
which  the  heresy  imperiled ;  and,  if  he  had  to  outrage 
his  natural   feelings   in  the  bloody   work,  was  not  his 
merit  all  the  greater? 

40.  But  on  this  journey  doubt  at  last  invaded  his 
mind.      It  was  a  long  journey  of  over  a  hundred  and 
sixty  miles;    with  the  slow  means  of   locomotion   then 
available,  it  would  occupy  at  least  six  days ;  and  a  con- 
siderable portion  of  it  lay  across  a  desert,  where  there 
was  nothing  to  distract  the  mind  from  its  own  reflections. 
In  this  enforced  leisure  doubts  arose.      What  else  can  be 
meant  by  the  word  with  which  the  Lord  saluted  him : 
"It  is  hard  f or  thee  to  kick  against  the  goad!"     The 


36  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

figure  of  speech  is  borrowed  from  a  custom  of  Eastern 
countries :  the  ox-driver  wields  a  long  pole,  at  the  end  of 
which  is  fixed  a  piece  of  sharpened  iron,  with  which  he 
urges  the  animal  to  go  on  or  stand  still  or  change  its 
course ;  and,  if  it  is  refractory,  it  kicks  against  the  goad, 
injuring  and  infuriating  itself  with  the  wounds  it  re- 
ceives. This  is  a  vivid  picture  of  a  man  wounded  and 
tortured  by  compunctions  of  conscience.  There  was 
something  in  him  rebelling  against  the  course  of  inhu- 
manity on  which  he  was  embarked  and  suggesting  that 
he  was  fighting  against  God. 

41.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  whence  these  doubts 
arose.  He  was  a  scholar  of  Gamaliel,  the  advocate  of 
humanity  and  tolerance,  who  had  counseled  the  Sanhe- 
drin  to  leave  the  Christians  alone.  He  was  himself  too 
young  yet  to  have  hardened  his  heart  to  all  the  dis- 
agreeables of  such  ghastly  work.  Highly  strung  as  was 
his  religious  zeal,  nature  could  not  but  speak  out  at  last. 
But  probably  his  compunctions  were  chiefly  awakened  by 
the  character  and  behavior  of  the  Christians.  He  had 
heard  the  noble  defense  of  Stephen  and  seen  his  face  in 
the  council-chamber  shining  like  that  of  an  angel.  He 
had  seen  him  kneeling  on  the  field  of  execution  and  pray- 
ing for  his  murderers.  Doubtless,  in  the  course  of  the 
persecution  he  had  witnessed  many  similar  scenes.  Did 
these  people  look  like  enemies  of  God?  As  he  entered 
their  homes  to  drag  them  forth  to  prison,  he  got  glimpses 
of  their  social  life.  Could  such  spectacles  of  purity  and 
love  be  products  of  the  powers  of  darkness?  Did  not  the 
serenity  with  which  his  victims  went  to  meet  their  fate 
look  like  the  very  peace  which  he  had  long  been  sighing 
for  in  vain? 

Their  arguments,  too,  must  have  told  on  a  mind  like 


HIS    CONVERSION  37 

his.  He  had  heard  Stephen  proving  from  the  Scriptures 
that  it  behooved  the  Messiah  to  suffer ;  and  the  general 
tenor  of  the  earliest  Christian  apologetic  assures  us  that 
many  of  the  accused  must  on  their  trial  have  appealed  to 
passages  like  the  fifty-third  of  Isaiah,  where  a  career  is 
predicted  for  the  Messiah  startingly  like  that  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  He  heard  incidents  of  Christ's  life  from 
their  lips  which  betokened  a  personage  very  different 
from  the  picture  sketched  for  him  by  his  Pharisaic  in- 
formants: and  the  sayings  of  their  Master  which  the 
Christians  quoted  did  not  sound  like  the  utterances  of 
the  fanatic  he  conceived  Jesus  to  have  been. 

42.  Such  may  have  been  some  of  the  reflections 
which  agitated  the  traveler  as  he  moved  onward,  sunk 
in  gloomy  thought.  But  might  not  these  be  mere  sug- 
gestions of  temptation — the  morbid  fancies  of  a  wearied 
mind,  or  the  whispers  of  a  wicked  spirit  attempting  to 
draw  him  off  from  the  service  of  Heaven?  The  sight  of 
Damascus,  shining  out  like  a  gem  in  the  heart  of  the 
desert,  restored  him  to  himself.  There,  in  the  company 
of  sympathetic  rabbis  and  in  the  excitement  of  effort,  he 
would  dispel  from  his  mind  these  fancies  bred  of  soli- 
tude. So  onward  he  pressed,  and  the  sun  of  noonday, 
from  which  all  but  the  most  impatient  travelers  in  the 
East  take  refuge  in  a  long  siesta,  looked  down  upon  him 
still  urging  forward  his  course  toward  the  city  gate. 

48.  The  Vision  of  Christ. — The  news  of  Saul's 
coming  had  arrived  at  Damascus  before  him ;  and  the 
little  flock  of  Christ  was  praying  that,  if  it  were  possible, 
the  progress  of  the  wolf,  who  was  on  his  way  to  spoil 
the  fold,  might  be  arrested.  Nearer  and  nearer,  however, 
h*  drew;  he  had  reached  the  last  stage  of  his  journey; 


38  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

and  at  the  sight  of  the  place  which  contained  his  victims 
his  appetite  grew  keener  for  the  prey.  But  the  Good 
Shepherd  had  heard  the  cries  of  the  trembling  flock  and 
went  forth  to  face  the  wolf  on  their  behalf.  Suddenly 
at  midday,  as  Paul  and  his  company  were  riding  forward 
beneath  the  blaze  of  the  Syrian  sun,  a  light  which  dimmed 
even  that  fierce  glare  shone  round  about  them,  a  shock 
vibrated  through  the  atmosphere,  and  in  a  moment  they 
found  themselves  prostrate  upon  the  ground.  The  rest 
was  for  Paul  alone :  a  voice  sounded  in  his  ears.  ' '  Saul, 
Saul,  why  persecutest  thou  Me?"  and,  as  he  looked  up 
and  asked  the  radiant  Figure  that  had  spoken,  "  Who  art 
Thou,  Lord?"  the  answer  was,  "I  am  Jesus,  whom  thou 
art  persecuting. ' ' 

44.  The  language  in  which  he  ever  afterward  spokfe 
of  this  event  forbids  us  to  think  that  it  was  a  mere  vision 
of  Jesus  he  saw.  He  ranks  it  as  the  last  of  the  appear- 
ances of  the  risen  Saviour  to  His  disciples,  and  places  it 
on  the  same  level  as  the  appearances  to  Peter,  to  James, 
to  the  eleven,  and  to  the  five  hundred.  It  was,  in  fact, 
Christ  Jesus  in  the  vesture  of  His  glorified  humanity, 
who  for  once  had  left  the  spot,  wherever  it  may  be  in 
the  spaces  of  the  universe,  where  now  he  sits  on  His  me- 
diatorial throne,  in  order  to  show  Himself  to  this  elect 
disciple ;  and  the  light  which  outshone  the  sun  was  no 
other  than  the  glory  in  which  His  humanity  is  there  en- 
veloped. An  incidental  evidence  of  this  was  supplied 
in  the  words  which  were  addressed  to  Paul.  They  were 
spoken  in  the  Hebrew,  or  rather  the  Aramaic  tongue — 
the  same  language  in  which  Jesus  had  been  wont  to 
address  the  multitudes  by  the  Lake  and  converse  with 
His  disciples  in  the  desert  solitudes ;  and,  as  in  the  days 
of  His  flesh  He  was  wont  to  open  His  mouth  in  parables, 


HIS    CONVERSION  89 

BO  now  He  clothed  His  rebuke  in  a  striking  metaphor: 
"It  is  hard  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  goad." 

45.  Effect  on  Paul's  Thought. — It  would  be  im- 
possible to  exaggerate  what  took  place  in  the  mind  of 
Paul  in  this  single  instant.      It  is  but  a  clumsy  way  we 
have  of  dividing  time  by  the  revolution  of  the  clock  into 
minutes  and  hours,  days  and  years,  as  if  each  portion  so 
measured   were   of   the  same  size  as    another  of   equal 
length.     This   may   suit  well   enough   for  the  common 
ends  of  life,  but  there  are  finer  measurements  for  which 
it  is  quite  misleading.     The  real  size  of  any  space  of 
time  is  to  be  measured  by  the  amount  it  contains  of  the 
souPs  experience ;  no  one  hour  is  exactly  equal  to  an- 
other, and  there  are  single  hours  which  are  larger  than 
months.     So  measured,  this  one  moment  of  Paul's  life 
was  perhaps  larger  than   all  his  previous  years.      The 
glare  of  revelation  was  so  intense  that  it  might  well  have 
scorched  the  eye  of  reason  or  burnt  out  life  itself,  as  the 
external  light  dazzled  the  eyes  of  his  body  into  blindness. 

When  his  companions  recovered  themselves  and 
turned  to  their  leader,  they  discovered  that  he  had  lost 
his  sight,  and  they  had  to  take  him  by  the  hand  and  lead 
him  into  the  city.  What  a  change  was  there !  Instead 
of  the  proud  Pharisee  riding  through  the  streets  with  the 
pomp  of  an  inquisitor,  a  stricken  man,  trembling,  gro- 
ping, clinging  to  the  hand  of  his  guide,  arrives  at  the 
house  of  entertainment  amidst  the  consternation  of  those 
who  receive  him  and,  getting  hastily  to  a  room  where  he 
can  ask  them  to  leave  him  alone,  sinks  down  there  in  the 
darkness. 

46.  But,  though  it  was  dark  without,  it  was  bright 
within.     The  blindness  had  been  sent  for  the  purpose  of 


40  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

secluding  him  from  outward  distractions  and  enabling 
him  to  concentrate  himself  on  the  objects  presented  to 
the  inner  eye.  For  the  same  reason  he  neither  ate  nor 
drank  for  three  days.  He  was  too  absorbed  in  the 
thoughts  which  crowded  on  him  thick  and  fast. 

47.  In  these  three  days,   it  may  be  said  with  con- 
fidence, he  got  at  least  a  partial  hold  of  all  the  truths 
he  afterward   proclaimed   to   the  world;  for   his  whole 
theology  is  nothing  but  the  explication  of  his  own  con- 
version.     First  of  all,  his  whole  previous  life  fell  down 
in  fragments  at  his  feet.      It  had  been  of  one  piece,  and 
wonderfully  complete.      It   had  appeared  to  himself  to 
be  a  consistent  deduction  from  the  highest  revelation  he 
knew  and,  in  spite  of  its  imperfections,  to  lie  in  the  line 
of  the  will  of  God.      But,  instead  of  this,  it  had  been 
rushing  in  diametrical  opposition  against  the  will  and 
revelation  of  God,  and  had  now  been  brought  to  a  stop 
and  broken  in  pieces  by  the  collision.     That  which  had 
appeared  to  him  the  perfection  of  service  and  obedience 
had  involved  his  soul  in  the  guilt  of  blasphemy  and  inno- 
cent blood.      Such  had  been  the  issue  of  seeking  right- 
eousness by  the  works  of  the  law.      At  the  very  moment 
when  his  righteousness  seemed  at  last  to  be  turning  to 
the  whiteness  so  long  desired,  it  was  caught  in  the  blaze 
of  this  revelation  and  whirled  away  in  shreds  of  shriveled 
blackness.     It  had  been  a  mistake,  then,  from  first  to 
last.     Righteousness  was  not  to  be  obtained  by  the  law, 
but  only  guilt  and  doom.     This  was  the  unmistakable 
conclusion,  and  it  became  the  one  pole  of  Paul's  the- 
ology. 

48.  But,  while  his  theory  of  life  thus  fell  in  pieces 
with  a  crash  that  might  by  itself  have  shaken  his  reason, 
in  the  same  moment  an  opposite  experience  befell  him. 


HIS    CONVERSION  41 

Not  in  wrath  and  vengeance  did  Jesus  of  Nazareth  appear 
to  him,  as  He  might  have  been  expected  to  appear  to  the 
deadly  enemy  of  His  cause.  His  first  word  might  have 
been  a  demand  for  retribution,  and  His  first  might  have 
been  His  last.  But,  instead  of  this,  His  face  had  been 
full  of  divine  benignity  and  His  words  full  of  consider- 
ateness  for  His  persecutor.  In  the  very  moment  when 
the  divine  strength  cast  him  down  on  the  ground  he  felt 
himself  encompassed  by  the  divine  love.  This  was  the 
prize  he  had  all  his  lifetime  been  struggling  for  in  vain, 
and  now  he  grasped  it  in  the  very  moment  in  which  he 
discovered  that  his  struggles  had  been  fightings  against 
God ;  he  was  lifted  up  from  his  fall  in  the  arms  of  God's 
love ;  he  was  reconciled  and  accepted  forever.  As  time 
went  on,  he  was  more  and  more  assured  of  this.  In 
Christ  he  found  without  effort  of  his  own  the  peace  and 
the  moral  strength  he  had  striven  for  in  vain.  And  this 
became  the  other  pole  of  his  theology — that  righteousness 
and  strength  are  found  in  Christ  without  man's  effort  by 
mere  trust  in  God's  grace  and  acceptance  of  His  gift. 
There  were  a  hundred  other  things  involved  in  these  two 
which  it  required  time  to  work  out;  but  within  these 
two  poles  the  system  of  Paul's  thinking  ever  afterward 
revolved. 

49.  Effect  on  his  Future.-— The  three  dark  days 
were  not  done  before  he  knew  one  thing  more — that  his 
life  was  to  be  devoted  to  the  proclamation  of  these  dis- 
coveries. In  any  case  this  must  have  been.  Paul  was  a 
born  propagandist  and  could  not  have  become  the  pos- 
sessor of  such  revolutionary  truth  without  spreading  it. 
Besides,  he  had  a  warm  heart,  that  could  be  deeply  moved 
with  gratitude;  and,  when  Jesus,  whom  he  had  blas- 
phemed and  tried  to  blot  out  of  the  memory  of  the 


42  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

world,  treated  him  with  such  divine  benignity,  giving 
him  back  his  forfeited  life  and  placing  him  in  that  posi- 
tion which  had  always  appeared  to  him  the  prize  of  life, 
he  could  not  but  put  himself  at  His  service  with  all  his 
powers.  He  was  an  ardent  patriot,  the  hope  of  the 
Messiah  having  long  occupied  for  him  the  whole  horizon 
of  the  future ;  and,  when  he  knew  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was  the  Messiah  of  his  people  and  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  it  followed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  he  must 
spend  his  life  in  making  this  known. 

50.  But  this  destiny  was  also  clearly  announced  to 
nim  from  the  outside.  Ananias,  probably  the  leading 
man  in  the  small  Christian  community  at  Damascus,  was 
informed,  in  a  vision,  of  the  change  which  had  happened 
to  Paul,  and  was  sent  to  restore  his  sight  and  admit  him 
into  the  Christian  Church  by  baptism. 

Nothing  could  be  more  beautiful  than  the  way  in 
which  this  servant  of  God  approached  the  man  who  had 
come  to  the  city  to  take  his  life.  As  soon  as  he  learned 
the  state  of  the  case,  he  forgave  and  forgot  all  the  crimes 
of  his  enemy  and  sprang  to  clasp  him  in  the  arms  of 
Christian  love.  Certain  as  may  have  been  the  assurance 
which  in  the  inner  world  of  the  mind  Paul  had  in  those 
three  days  received  of  forgiveness,  it  must  have  been  to 
him  a  most  welcome  reassurance  when,  on  opening  his 
eyes  again  upon  the  external  world,  he  was  met  with  no 
contradiction  of  the  visions  he  had  been  looking  on,  but 
the  first  object  he  saw  was  a  human  face  bending  over 
him  with  looks  of  forgiveness  and  perfect  love.  He 
learned  from  Ananias  the  future  the  Saviour  had  ap- 
pointed him:  he  had  been  apprehended  by  Christ  in 
order  to  be  a  vessel  to  bear  His  name  to  Gentiles  and 
kings  and  to  the  children  of  Israel.  He  accepted  the 


HIS    CONVERSION  48 

mission  with  limitless  devotion ;  and  from  that  hour  to 
the  hour  of  his  death  he  had  but  one  ambition — to 
apprehend  that  for  which  he  had  been  apprehended  of 
Christ  Jesus. 


CHAPTER  IV 
HIS  GOSPEL 


Paragraphs  51-67. 

51-53.    SOJOURN   IN   ARABIA. 

54-58.  FAILURE  OF  MAN'S  RIGHTEOUSNESS 
56.  Failure  of  the  Gentiles.  57.  Failure  of  th*. 
Jews.  58.  The  Fall  the  ultimate  Cause  of  Failure. 

59-65.  THE  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  GOD.  The  New 
Adam.  The  New  Man. 

66,  67.  LEADING  PECULIARITIES  OF  THE  PAUL- 
INE GOSPEL. 

51.  Sojourn  in  Arabia. — When  a  man  has  been 
suddenly  converted,  as  Paul  was,  he  is  generally  driven 
by  a  strong  impulse  to  make  known  what  has  happened 
to  him.  Such  testimony  is  very  impressive;  for  it  is 
that  of  a  soul  which  is  receiving  its  first  glimpses  of  the 
realities  of  the  unseen  world,  and  there  is  a  vividness 
about  the  report  it  gives  of  them  which  produces  an  irre- 
sistible sense  of  reality.  Whether  Paul  yielded  at  once 
to  this  impulse  or  not  we  cannot  say  with  certainty. 
The  language  of  the  book  of  Acts,  where  it  is  said  that 
"straightway  he  preached  Christ  in  the  synagogues," 
would  lead  us  to  suppose  so.  But  we  learn  from  his  own 
writings  that  there  was  another  powerful  impulse  influ- 
encing him  at  the  same  time ;  and  it  is  uncertain  which 
of  the  two  he  obeyed  first.  This  other  impulse  was  the 
wish  to  retreat  into  solitude  and  think  out  the  meaning 
and  issues  of  that  which  had  befallen  him.  It  cannot  be 

44 


HIS    GOSPEL  45 

wondered  at  that  he  felt  this  to  be  a  necessity.  He  had 
believed  his  former  creed  intensely  and  staked  everything 
on  it ;  to  see  it  suddenly  shattered  in  pieces  must  have 
shaken  him  severely.  The  new  truth  which  had  been 
flashed  upon  him  was  so  far-reaching  and  revolutionary 
that  it  could  not  be  taken  in  at  once  in  all  its  bearings. 
Paul  was  a  born  thinker ;  it  was  not  enough  for  him  to 
experience  anything ;  he  required  to  comprehend  it  and 
fit  it  into  the  structure  of  his  convictions. 

Immediately,  therefore,  after  his  conversion  he  went 
away,  he  tells  us,  into  Arabia.  He  does  not,  indeed, 
say  for  what  purpose  he  went ;  but,  as  there  is  no  record 
of  his  preaching  in  that  region  and  this  statement  occurs 
in  the  midst  of  a  vehement  defense  of  the  originality  of 
his  gospel,  we  may  conclude  with  considerable  certainty 
that  he  went  into  retirement  for  the  purpose  of  grasping 
in  thought  the  details  and  the  bearings  of  the  revelation 
he  had  been  put  in  possession  of.  In  lonely  contempla- 
tion he  worked  them  out ;  and,  when  he  returned  to  man- 
kind, he  was  in  possession  of  that  view  of  Christianity 
which  was  peculiar  to  himself  and  formed  the  burden  of 
his  preaching  during  the  subsequent  years. 

52.  There  is  some  doubt  as  to  the  precise  place  of  his 
retirement,  because  Arabia  is  a  word  of  vague  and  vari- 
able significance.  But  most  probably  it  denotes  the 
Arabia  of  the  Wanderings,  the  principal  feature  of  which 
was  Mount  Sinai.  This  was  a  spot  hallowed  by  great 
memories  and  by  the  presence  of  other  great  men  of  reve- 
lation. Here  Moses  had  seen  the  burning  bush  and  com- 
muned with  God  on  the  top  of  the  mountain.  Here 
Elijah  had  roamed  in  his  season  of  despair  and  drunk 
anew  at  the  wells  of  'inspiration.  What  place  could  be 
oiore  appropriate  for  the  meditations  of  this  successor  of 


46  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

these  men  of  God?  In  the  valleys  where  the  manna  fell 
and  under  the  shadows  of  the  peaks  which  had  burned 
beneath  the  feet  of  Jehovah  he  pondered  the  problem  of 
his  life. 

It  is  a  great  example.  Originality  in  the  preaching 
of  the  truth  depends  on  the  solitary  intuition  of  it. 
Paul  enjoyed  the  special  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost; 
but  this  did  not  render  the  concentrated  activity  of  his 
own  thinking  unnecessary  but  only  lent  it  peculiar  inten- 
sity ;  and  the  clearness  and  certainty  of  his  gospel  were 
due  to  these  months  of  sequestered  thought.  His  retire- 
ment may  have  lasted  a  year  or  more ;  for  between  his 
conversion  and  his  final  departure  from  Damascus,  to 
which  he  returned  from  Arabia,  three  years  intervened ; 
and  one  of  them  at  least  was  spent  in  this  way. 

53.  We  have  no  detailed  record  of  what  the  outlines 
of  his  gospel  were  till  a  period  long  subsequent  to  this ; 
but,  as  these,  when  first  they  are  traceable,  are  a  mere 
cast  of  the  features  of  his  conversion,  and,  as  his  mind 
was  working  so  long  and  powerfully  on  the  interpretation 
>f  that  event  at  this  period,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  gospel  sketched  in  the  Epistles  to  the  Romans  and 
fee  Galatians  was  substantially  the  same  as  he  preached 
(from  the  first ;  and  we  are  safe  in  inferring  from  these 
Writings  our  account  of  his  Arabian  meditations. 

54.  Failure  of  Man's  Righteousness. — The  start- 
ing-point of  Paul's  thinking  was  still,  as  it  had  been 
from  his  childhood,  the  conviction,  inherited  from  pious 
generations,  that  the  true  end  and  felicity  of  man  lay  in 
the  enjoyment  of  the  favor  of  God.     This  was  to  be 
attained  through  righteousness ;  only  the  righteous  could 
God  be  at  peace  with  and  favor  with  His  love.      To 


HIS   GOSPEL  47 

attain  righteousness  must,  therefore,  be  the  chief  end  of 
man. 

55.  But  man  had  failed  to  attain  righteousness  and 
nad  thereby  come  short  of  the  favor  of  God,  and  exposed 
himself  to  the  divine  wrath.     Paul  proves  this  by  taking 
a  vast  survey  of  the  history  of  mankind  in  pre-Christian 
times  in  its  two   great  sections  —  the  Gentile  and  the 
Jewish. 

56.  The  Gentiles  failed.     It  might,  indeed,  be  sup- 
posed that  they  had  not  the  preliminary  conditions  for 
entering  on  the  pursuit  of  righteousness  at  all,  because 
they  did  not  enjoy  the  advantage  of  a  special  revelation. 
But   Paul   holds   that   even   the  heathen   know   enough 
of  God  to   be  aware  of  the  obligation   to  follow  after 
righteousness.     There  is  a  natural  revelation  of  God  in 
His  works  and  in  the  human  conscience  sufficient  to  en- 
lighten men  as  to  this  duty.      But  the  heathen,  instead 
of  making  use  of  this  light,  wantonly  extinguished  it. 
They  were  not  willing  to  retain  God  in  their  knowledge 
and  to  fetter  themselves  with  the  restraints  which  a  pure 
knowledge  of  Him  imposed.     They  corrupted  the  idea 
of  God  in  order  to  feel  at  ease  in  an  immoral  life.     The 
revenge  of  nature  came  upon  them  in  the  darkening  and 
confusion  of  their  intellects.     They  fell  into  such  insen- 
sate folly  as  to  change  the  glorious  and  incorruptible 
nature  of  God  into  the  images  of  men  and  beasts,  birds 
and  reptiles.     This  intellectual  degeneracy  was  followed 
by  still  deeper  moral  degeneracy.     God,  when  they  for- 
sook Him,  let  them  go ;  and,  when  His  restraining  grace 
was  removed,  down  they  rushed  into  the  depths  of  moral 
putridity.     Lust  and  passion  got  the  mastery  of  them,  and 
their  life  became  a  mass  of  moral  disease.      In  the  end 
of  the  first  chapter  of  Romans  the  features  of  their  con- 


48  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

dition  are  sketched  in  colors  that  might  be  borrowed 
from  the  abode  of  devils,  but  were  literally  taken,  as  is 
too  plainly  proved  by  the  pages  even  of  Gentile  histo- 
rians, from  the  condition  of  the  cultured  heathen  nations 
at  that  time.  This,  then,  was  the  history  of  one  half  of 
mankind:  it  had  utterly  fallen  from  righteousness  and 
exposed  itself  to  the  wrath  of  God,  which  is  revealed 
from  heaven  against  all  unrighteousness  of  men. 

57.  The  Jews  were  the  other  half  of  the  world. 
Had  they  succeeded  where  the  Gentiles  had  failed? 
They  enjoyed,  indeed,  great  advantages  over  the  heathen ; 
for  they  possessed  the  oracles  of  God,  in  which  the  divine 
nature  was  exhibited  in  a  form  which  rendered  it  inacces- 
sible to  human  perversion,  and  the  divine  law  was  written 
with  equal  plainness  in  the  same  form.  But  had  they 
profited  by  these  advantages?  It  is  one  thing  to  know 
the  law  and  another  thing  to  do  it ;  but  it  is  doing,  not 
knowing,  which  is  righteousness.  Had  they,  then,  ful- 
filled the  will  of  God.  which  they  knew? 

Paul  had  lived  in  the  same  Jerusalem  in  which  Jesus 
assailed  the  corruption  and  hypocrisy  of  scribes  and 
Pharisees ;  he  had  looked  closely  at  the  lives  of  the  rep- 
resentative men  of  his  nation ;  and  he  does  not  hesitate 
to  charge  the  Jews  in  mass  with  the  very  same  sins  as  the 
Gentiles ;  nay,  he  says  that  through  them  the  name  of 
God  was  blasphemed  among  the  Gentiles.  They  boasted 
of  their  knowledge  and  were  the  bearers  of  the  torch  of 
truth,  the  fierce  blaze  of  which  exposed  the  sins  of  the 
heathen ;  but  their  religion  was  a  bitter  criticism  of  the 
conduct  of  others ;  they  forgot  to  examine  their  own 
conduct  by  the  same  light ;  and,  while  they  were  repeat- 
ing, Do  not  steal,  Do  not  commit  adultery,  and  a  multi- 
tude of  other  commandments,  they  were  indulging  in 


HIS    GOSPEL  49 

these  sins  themselves.  What  good  in  these  circumstances 
did  their  knowledge  do  them?  It  only  condemned  them 
the  more ;  for  their  sin  was  against  light.  While  the 
heathen  knew  so  little  that  their  sins  were  comparatively 
innocent,  the  sins  of  the  Jews  were  conscious  and  pre- 
sumptuous. Their  boasted  superiority  was  therefore 
inferiority.  They  were  more  deeply  condemned  than 
the  Gentiles  they  despised,  and  exposed  to  a  heavier 
curse. 

58.  The  truth  is,  Gentiles  and  Jews  had  both  failed 
for  the  same  reason.  Trace  these  two  streams  of  human 
life  back  to  their  sources  and  you  come  at  last  to  a  point 
where  they  are  not  two  streams  but  one ;  and,  before  the 
bifurcation  took  place,  something  had  happened  which 
predetermined  the  failure  of  both.  In  Adam  all  fell, 
and  from  him  all,  both  Gentiles  and  Jews,  inherited  a 
nature  too  weak  for  the  arduous  attainment  of  righteous- 
ness; human  nature  is  carnal  now,  not  spiritual,  and, 
therefore,  unequal  to  this  supreme  spiritual  achievement. 

The  law  could  not  alter  this;  it  had  no  creative 
power  to  make  the  carnal  spiritual.  On  the  contrary, 
it  aggravated  the  evil.  It  actually  multiplied  offenses ; 
for  its  clear  and  full  description  of  sins,  which  would 
have  been  an  incomparable  guide  to  a  sound  nature, 
turned  into  temptation  for  a  morbid  one.  The  very 
knowledge  of  sin  tempts  to  its  commission;  the  very 
command  not  to  do  anything  is  to  a  diseased  nature  a 
reason  for  doing  it.  This  was  the  effect  of  the  law :  it 
multiplied  and  aggravated  transgressions.  And  this  was 
God's  intention.  Not  that  He  was  the  author  of  sin ; 
but,  like  a  skillful  physician,  who  has  sometimes  to  use 
appliances  to  bring  a  sore  to  a  head  before  he  heals  it, 
He  allowed  the  heathen  to  go  their  own  way  and  gare 


60  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

the  Jews  the  law,  that  the  sin  of  human  nature  might 
exhibit  all  its  inherent  qualities,  before  He  intervened 
to  heal  it.  The  healing,  however,  was  His  real  purpose 
all  the  time :  He  concluded  all  under  sin,  that  He  might 
have  mere}'  upon  all. 

59.  The  Righteousness  of  God. — Man's  extremity 
was  God's  opportunity;    not,  indeed,  in  the  sense  that, 
one  way  of  salvation  having  failed,  God  devised  another. 
The  law  had  never,  in  His  intention,  been  a  way  of  sal- 
vation.     It  was  only  a  means  of  illustrating  the  need  of 
salvation.      But   the   moment  when   this   demonstration 
was  complete  was  the  signal  for  God  to  produce   His 
method,   which    He   had   kept  locked    in    His   counsel 
through  the  generations  of  human  probation.     It  had 
never  been  His  intention  to  permit  man  to  fail  of  his 
true  end.      Only  He  allowed  time  to  prove  that  fallen 
man  could  never  reach  righteousness  by  his  own  efforts ; 
and,  when  the  righteousness  of  man  had  been  demon- 
strated to  be  a  failure,  He  brought  forth  His  secret — the 
righteousness  of  God. 

This  was  Christianity ;  this  was  the  sum  and  issue  of 
the  mission  of  Christ — the  conferring  upon  man,  as  a 
free  gift,  of  that  which  is  indispensable  to  his  blessedness, 
but  which  he  had  failed  himself  to  attain.  It  is  a  divine 
act ;  it  is  grace ;  and  man  obtains  it  by  acknowledging 
that  he  has  failed  himself  to  attain  it  and  by  accepting 
it  from  God;  it  is  got  by  faith  only.  It  is  "the  right- 
eousness of  God,  by  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ,  unto  all 
and  upon  all  them  that  believe." 

60.  Those  who  thus  receive  it  enter  at  once  into  that 
position  of  peace  and  favor  with  God  in  which  human 
felicity  consists  and  which  was  the  goal  aimed  at  by 


HIS    GOSPEL  51 

Paul  when  he  was  striving  for  righteousness  by  the  law. 
"Being  justified  by  faith,  we  have  peace  with  God 
through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  by  whom  also  we  have 
access  by  faith  into  this  grace  wherein  we  stand,  and 
rejoice  in  hope  of  the  glory  of  God."  It  is  a  sunny  life 
of  joy,  peace  and  hope  which  those  lead  who  have  come 
to  know  this  gospel.  There  may  be  trials  in  it ;  but, 
when  a  man's  life  is  reposing  in  the  attainment  of  its 
true  end,  trials  are  light  and  all  things  work  together  for 
good. 

61.  This  righteousness  of  God  is  for  all  the  children 
of  men — not  for  the  Jews  only,  but  for  the  Gentiles  also. 
The  demonstration  of  man's  inability  to  attain  righteous- 
ness was  made,  in  accordance  with  the  divine  purpose,  in 
both  sections  of  the  human  race ;  and  its  completion  was 
the  signal  for  the  exhibition  of  God's  grace  to  both  alike. 
The  work  of  Christ  was  not  for  the  children  of  Abraham, 
but  for  the  children  of  Adam.  *  *  As  in  Adam  all  died, 
so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive."  The  Gentiles  did 
not  need  to  undergo  circumcision  and  to  keep  the  law  in 
order  to  obtain  salvation ;  for  the  law  was  no  part  of 
salvation ;  it  belonged  entirely  to  the  preliminary  demon- 
stration of  man's  failure ;  and,  when  it  had  accomplished 
this  service,  it  was  ready  to  vanish  away.  The  only 
human  condition  of  obtaining  God's  righteousness  is 
faith ;  and  this  is  as  easy  for  Gentile  as  Jew. 

This  was  an  inference  from  Paul's  own  experience. 
It  was  not  as  a  Jew,  but  as  a  man,  that  he  had  been  dealt 
with  in  his  conversion.  No  Gentile  could  have  been  less 
entitled  to  obtain  salvation  by  merit  than  he  had  been. 
So  far  from  the  law  raising  him  a  single  step  toward  sal- 
vation, it  had  removed  him  to  a  greater  distance  from 
God  than  any  Gentile,  and  cast  him  into  a  deeper  COB- 


52  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

demnation.  How,  then,  could  it  profit  the  Gentiles  to 
be  placed  in  this  position?  In  obtaining  the  righteous- 
ness in  which  he  was  now  rejoicing  he  had  done  nothing 
which  was  not  competent  to  any  human  being. 

62.  It  was  this  universal  love  of  God  revealed  in  the 
gospel  which  inspired  Paul  with  unbounded  admiration 
for   Christianity.       His  sympathies   had   been   cabined, 
cribbed,  confined  in  a  narrow  conception  of  God;  the 
new  faith  uncaged  his  heart  and  let  it  forth  into  the  free 
and  sunny  air.      God  became  a  new  God  to  him.      He 
calls  his  discovery  the  mystery  which  had  been  hidden 
from  ages  and  generations,  but  had  been  revealed  to  him 
and  his  fellow-apostles.      It  seemed  to   him   to   be  the 
secret  of  the  ages  and  to  be  destined  to  usher  in  a  new 
era,  far  better  than  any  the  world  had  ever  seen.     What 
kings  and  prophets  had  not  known  had  been  revealed  to 
him.      It   had   burst  on  him  like  the  dawn  of  a  new 
creation.       God   was   now   offering    to   every   man   the 
supreme  felicity  of  life — that  righteousness  which  had 
been  the  vain  endeavor  of  the  past  ages. 

63.  This  secret  of  the  new  epoch  had  not,  indeed, 
been  entirely  unanticipated  in  the  past.      It  had  been 
"witnessed  by  the  law  and   the  prophets."     The   law 
could  bear  witness  to  it  only  negatively  by  demonstrating 
its  necessity.      But  the  prophets  anticipated  it  more  pos- 
itively.     David,  for  example,  described  "the  blessedness 
of  the  man  unto  whom  God  imputed  righteousness  with- 
out works."      Still  more  clearly  had  Abraham  antici- 
pated it.      He  was  a  justified  man ;  and  it  was  by  faith, 
not  by  works,  that  He  was  justified — "he  believed  God, 
and  it  was  imputed  unto  him  for  righteousness. ' '     The 
law  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  justification,  for  it  was 
not  in  existence  for  four  centuries  afterward.     Nor  had 


HIS    GOSPEL  53 

circumcision  anything  to  do  with  it,  for  he  was  justified 
before  this  rite  was  instituted.  In  short,  it  was  as  a 
man,  not  as  a  Jew,  that  he  was  dealt  with  by  God,  and 
God  might  deal  with  any  human  being  in  the  same  way. 
It  had  once  made  the  thorny  road  of  legal  righteousness 
sacred  to  Paul  to  think  that  Abraham  and  the  prophets 
had  trodden  it  before  him ;  but  now  he  knew  that  their 
life  of  religious  joy  and  psalms  of  holy  calm  were  in- 
spired by  quite  different  experiences,  which  were  now 
diffusing  the  peace  of  lieaven  through  his  heart  also. 
But  only  the  first  streaks  of  dawn  had  been  descried  by 
them ;  the  perfect  day  had  broken  in  his  own  time. 

64.  The  Old  Adam  and  the  New. — Paul's  discovery 
of  this  way  of  salvation   was  an  actual  experience ;  he 
simply  knew  that  Christ,  in  the  moment  when   He  met 
him,  had  placed  him  in  that  position  of  peace  and  favor 
with  God  which  he  had  long  sighed  for  in  vain,  and,  as 
time  went  on,  he  felt  more  and  more  that  in  this  position 
he  was  enjoying  the  true  blessedness  of  life.      His  mission 
henceforth  must  be  to  herald  this  discovery  in  its  simple 
and  concrete  reality  under  the  name  of  the  Righteousness 
of  God.      But  a  mind  like  his  could  not  help  inquiring 
how  it  was  that  the  possession  of  Christ  did  so  much  for 
him.      In  the  Arabian  wilderness  he  pondered  over  this 
question,  and  the  gospel  he  subsequently  preached  con- 
tained a  luminous  answer  to  it. 

65.  From  Adam  his  children  derive  a  sad  double 
neritage — a   debt  of  guilt,   which   they  cannot   reduce, 
but  are  constantly  increasing,  and  a  carnal  nature,  which 
is  incapable  of  righteousness.     These  are  the  two  feature* 
of  the  religious  condition  of  fallen  man,  and  they  are 
the  double  source  of  all  his  woes. 


54  THE    LITE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

But  Christ  is  a  new  Adam,  a  new  head  of  humanity, 
and  those  who  are  connected  with  Him  by  faith  become 
heirs  of  a  double  heritage  of  a  precisely  opposite  kind. 
On  the  one  hand,  just  as  through  our  birth  in  the  first 
Adam's  line  we  get  inevitably  entangled  in  guilt,  like  a 
child  born  into  a  family  which  is  drowned  in  debt,  so 
through  our  birth  in  the  line  of  the  second  Adam  we  get 
involved  in  a  boundless  heritage  of  merit,  which  Christ, 
as  the  Head  of  His  family,  makes  the  common  property 
of  its  members.  This  extinguishes  the  debt  of  our  guilt 
and  makes  us  rich  in  Christ's  righteousness.  "As  by  one 
man's  disobedience  many  were  made  sinners,  so  by  the 
obedience  of  one  shall  many  be  made  righteous. ' '  On 
the  other  hand,  just  as  Adam  transmitted  to  his  posterity 
a  carnal  nature,  alien  to  God  and  unfit  for  righteousness, 
so  the  new  Adam  imparts  to  the  race  of  which  He  is  the 
Head  a  spiritual  nature,  akin  to  God  and  delighting  in 
righteousness. 

The  nature  of  man,  according  to  Paul,  normally  con- 
sists of  three  sections — body,  soul  and  spirit.  In  his 
original  constitution  these  occupied  definite  relations  of 
superiority  and  subordination  to  one  another,  the  spirit 
being  supreme,  the  body  undermost,  and  the  soul  occu- 
pying the  middle  position.  But  the  fall  disarranged 
this  order,  and  all  sin  consists  in  the  usurpation  by  the 
body  or  the  soul  of  the  place  of  the  spirit.  In  fallen 
man  these  two  inferior  sections  of  human  nature,  which 
together  form  what  Paul  calls  the  Flesh,  or  that  side  of 
human  nature  which  looks  toward  the  world  and  time, 
have  taken  possession  of  the  throne  and  completely  rule 
the  life,  while  the  spirit,  the  side  of  man  which  looks 
toward  God  and  eternity,  has  been  dethroned  and  re- 
duced to  a  condition  of  inefficiency  and  death.  Christ 
restores  the  lost  predominance  of  the  spirit  of  man  by 


HIS    GOSPEL  56 

taking  possession  of  it  by  his  own  Spirit.  His  Spirit 
dwells  in  the  human  spirit,  vivifying  it  and  sustaining  it 
in  such  growing  strength  that  it  becomes  more  and  more 
the  sovereign  part  of  the  human  constitution.  The  man 
ceases  to  be  carnal  and  becomes  spiritual ;  he  is  led  by 
the  Spirit  of  God  and  becomes  more  and  more  harmoni- 
ous with  all  that  is  holy  and  divine. 

The  flesh  does  not,  indeed,  easily  submit  to  the  loss 
of  supremacy.  It  clogs  and  obstructs  the  spirit  and  fights 
to  regain  possession  of  the  throne.  Paul  has  described 
this  struggle  in  sentences  of  terrible  vividness,  in  which 
all  generations  of  Christians  have  recognized  the  features 
of  their  deepest  experience.  But  the  issue  of  the  struggle 
is  not  doubtful.  Sin  shall  not  again  have  dominion  over 
those  in  whom  Christ's  Spirit  dwells,  or  dislodge  them 
from  their  standing  in  the  favor  of  God.  "  Neither  death 
nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor  principalities  nor  powers,  nor 
things  present  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height  nor  depth, 
nor  any  other  creature  shall  be  able  to  separate  us  from 
the  love  of  God  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord. ' ' 

66.  The  Pauline  Gospel. — Such  are  the  bare  out- 
lines of  the  gospel  which  Paul  brought  back  with  him 
from  the  Arabian  solitudes  and  afterward  preached  with 
unwearied  enthusiasm.  It  could  not  but  be  mixed  up  in 
his  mind  and  in  his  writings  with  the  peculiarities  of  his 
own  experience  as  a  Jew,  and  these  make  it  difficult  for 
us  to  grasp  his  system  in  some  of  its  details.  The  belief 
in  which  he  was  brought  up,  that  no  man  could  be  saved 
without  becoming  a  Jew,  and  the  notions  about  the  law 
from  which  he  had  to  cut  himself  free,  lie  very  distant 
from  our  modern  sympathies ;  yet  his  theology  could  not 
shape  itself  in  his  mind  except  in  contrast  to  these  mis- 
conceptions. This  became  subsequently  still  more  inevit- 


56  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

able  when  his  own  old  errors  met  him  as  the  watchwords  of 
a  party  within  the  Christian  Church  itself,  against  which 
he  had  to  wage  a  long  and  relentless  war.  Though  this 
conflict  forced  his  views  into  the  clearest  expression,  it 
encumbered  them  with  references  to  feelings  and  beliefs 
which  are  now  dead  to  the  interest  of  mankind.  But, 
in  spite  of  these  drawbacks,  the  Gospel  of  Paul  remains 
a  possession  of  incalculable  value  to  the  human  race. 
Its  searching  investigation  of  the  failure  and  the  wants 
of  human  nature,  its  wonderful  unfolding  of  the  wisdom 
of  God  in  the  education  of  the  pre-Christian  world,  and 
its  exhibition  of  the  depth  and  universality  of  the  divine 
love  are  among  the  profoundest  elements  of  revelation. 

67.  But  it  is  in  its  conception  of  Christ  that  Paul's 
gospel  wears  its  imperishable  crown,  The  Evangelists 
sketched  in  a  hundred  traits  of  simple  and  affecting 
beauty  the  fashion  of  the  earthly  life  of  the  man  Christ 
Jesus,  and  in  these  the  model  of  human  conduct  will 
always  have  to  be  sought ;  but  to  Paul  was  reserved  the 
task  of  making  known,  in  its  heights  and  depths,  the 
work  which  the  Son  of  God  accomplished  as  the  Saviour 
of  the  race.  He  scarcely  ever  refers  to  the  incidents  of 
Christ's  earthly  life,  although  here  and  there  he  betrays 
that  he  knew  them  well.  To  him  Christ  was  ever  the 
glorious  Being,  shining  with  the  splendor  of  heaven,  who 
appeared  to  him  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  and  the  Saviour 
who  caught  him  up  into  the  heavenly  peace  and  joy  of  a 
new  life.  When  the  Church  of  Christ  thinks  of  her 
Head  as  the  deliverer  of  the  soul  from  sin  and  death,  as 
a  spiritualizing  presence  ever  with  her  and  at  work  in 
every  believer,  and  as  the  Lord  over  all  things  who  will 
come  again  without  sin  unto  salvation,  it  is  in  forms  of 
thought  given  her  by  the  Holy  Ghost  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  this  apostle. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  WORK  AWAITING  THE  WORKER1 

Paragraphs  68-78. 

68-70.    Eight  years  of  Comparative  Inactivity  at  Tarsus. 

Gentiles  admitted  to  Christian  Church. 
71,  72.    Paul   discovered  by  Barnabas  and   brought  to 

Antioch.    His  Work  there. 
73-78.    THE  KNOWN   WOULD  OF  THAT   PERIOD. 

75.  The  Greeks;    76.   The  Bomans;   77.  The  Jews; 

78.  Barbarians  and  Slaves. 

68.  Years  of  Inactivity. — Paul  was  now  in  pos- 
session of  his  gospel  and  was  aware  that  it  was  to  be  the 
mission  of  his  life  to  preach  it  to  the  Gentiles ;  but  he 
had  still  to  wait  a  long  time  before  his  peculiar  career 
commenced.      We  hear  scarcely  anything  of  him  for 
seven  or  eight  years;  and  yet  we  can  only  guess  what 
may  have  been  the  reasons  of  Providence  for  imposing  on 
His  servant  so  long  a  time  of  waiting. 

69.  There  may  have  been  personal   reasons  for  it 
connected  with   Paul's  own   spiritual  history;    because 
waiting  is  a  common  instrument  of  providential  disci- 
pline for  those  to  whom  exceptional  work  has  been  ap- 
pointed.    A  public  reason  may  have  been  that  he  was 
too  obnoxious  to  the  Jewish  authorities  to  be  tolerated 
yet  in  those  scenes  where  Christian  activity  commanded 
any  notice.      He  had  attempted  to  preach  in  Damascus, 
where  his  conversion  had  taken  place,  but  was  immedi- 

57 


58  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

ately  forced  to  flee  from  the  fury  of  the  Jews ;  and,  going 
thence  to  Jerusalem  and  beginning  to  testify  as  a  Chris- 
tian, he  found  the  place  in  two  or  three  weeks  too  hot  to 
hold  him.  No  wonder ;  how  could  the  Jews  be  expected 
to  allow  the  man  who  had  so  lately  been  the  chief  cham- 
pion of  their  religion  to  preach  the  faith  which  they  had 
employed  him  to  destroy?  When  he  fled  from  Jerusalem, 
he  bent  his  steps  to  his  native  Tarsus,  where  for  years  he 
remained  in  obscurity.  No  doubt  he  testified  for  Christ 
there  to  his  own  family,  and  there  are  some  indications 
that  he  carried  on  evangelistic  operations  in  his  native 
province  of  Cilicia :  but,  if  he  did  so,  his  work  may  be 
said  to  have  been  that  of  a  man  in  hiding,  for  it  was  not 
in  the  central  or  even  in  a  visible  stream  of  the  new 
religious  movement. 

70.  These  are  but  conjectural  reasons  for  the  obscu- 
rity of  those  years.  But  there  was  one  undoubted  reason 
for  the  delay  of  Paul's  career  of  the  greatest  possible 
importance.  In  this  interval  took  place  that  revolution 
— one  of  the  most  momentous  in  the  history  of  mankind 
— by  which  the  Gentiles  were  admitted  to  equal  privileges 
with  the  Jews  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  This  change 
proceeded  from  the  original  circle  of  apostles,  in  Jeru- 
salem, and  Peter,  the  chief  of  the  apostles,  was  the  in- 
strument of  it.  By  the  vision  of  the  sheet  of  clean  and 
unclean  beasts,  which  he  saw  at  Joppa,  he  was  prepared 
for  the  part  he  was  to  play  in  this  transaction,  and  he 
admitted  the  Gentile  Cornelius,  of  Caesarea,  and  his  fam- 
ily to  the  Church  by  baptism  without  circumcision.  This 
was  an  innovation  involving  boundless  consequences.  It 
was  a  necessary  preliminary  to  Paul's  mission-work,  and 
subsequent  events  were  to  show  how  wise  was  the  divine 
arrangement  that  the  first  Gentile  entrants  into  the 


THE    WORK   AWAITING    THE    WORKER  59 

Church  should  be  admitted  by  the  hands  of  Peter  rather 
than  by  those  of  Paul. 

71.  As  soon  as  this  event  had  taken  place,  the  arena 
was  clear  for  Paul's  career,  and  a  door  was  immediately 
opened  for  his  entrance  upon  it.      Almost  simultaneously 
with  the  baptism  of  the  Gentile  family  at  Caesarea  a  great 
revival   broke  out  among  the   Gentiles  of  the  city  of 
Antioch,  the  capital  of  Syria.     The  movement  had  been 
begun  by  fugitives  driven  by  persecution  from  Jerusalem, 
and  it  was  carried  on  with  the  sanction  of  the  apostles, 
who  sent  Barnabas,  one  of  their  trusted  coadjutors,  from 
Jerusalem  to  superintend  it. 

This  man  knew  Paul.  When  Paul  first  came  to 
Jerusalem  after  his  conversion  and  assayed  to  join  himself 
to  the  Christians  there,  they  were  all  afraid  of  him, 
suspecting  the  teeth  and  claws  of  the  wolf  beneath  the 
fleece  of  the  sheep.  But  Barnabas  rose  superior  to  these 
fears  and  suspicions  and,  having  taken  the  new  convert 
and  heard  his  story,  believed  in  him  and  persuaded  the 
rest  to  receive  him.  The  intercourse  thus  begun  only 
lasted  a  week  or  two  at  that  time,  as  Paul  had  to  leave 
Jerusalem ;  but  Barnabas  had  received  a  profound  im- 
pression of  his  personality  and  did  not  forget  him. 
When  he  was  sent  down  to  superintend  the  revival  at 
Antioch,  he  soon  found  himself  embarrassed  with  its 
magnitude  and  in  need  of  assistance;  and  the  idea 
occurred  to  him  that  Paul  was  the  man  he  wanted. 
Tarsus  was  not  far  off,  and  thither  he  went  to  seek  him. 
Paul  accepted  his  invitation  and  returned  with  him  to 
Antioch. 

72.  The  hour  he  had  been  waiting  for  had  struck, 
and  he  threw  himself  into  the  work  of  evangelizing  the 
Gentiles  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  great  nature  that  found 


60  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

itself  at  last  in  its  proper  sphere.  The  movement  at  once 
responded  to  the  pressure  of  such  a  hand ;  the  disciples 
became  so  numerous  and  prominent  that  the  heathen  gave 
them  a  new  name — that  name  of  "Christians,"  which  has 
ever  since  continued  to  be  the  badge  of  faith  in  Christ — 
and  Antioch,  a  city  of  half  a  million  inhabitants,  became 
the  headquarters  of  Christianity  instead  of  Jerusalem. 
Soon  a  large  church  was  formed,  and  one  of  the  mani- 
festations of  the  zeal  with  which  it  was  pervaded  was  a 
proposal,  which  gradually  shaped  itself  into  an  enthusi- 
astic resolution,  to  send  forth  a  mission  to  the  heathen. 
As  a  matter  of  course,  Paul  was  designated  for  this  service. 

73.  The  Known  World  of  that  Period. — As  we  see 
him  thus  brought  at  length  face  to  face  with  the  task  of 
his  life,  let  us  pause  to  take  a  brief  survey  of  the  world 
which  he  was  setting  out  to  conquer.      Nothing  less  was 
what  he  aimed  at.      In  Paul's  time  the  known  world  was 
so  small  a  place,  that  it  did  not  seem  impossible  even  for 
a  single  man  to  make  a  spiritual  conquest  of  it ;  and  it 
had  been  wonderfully  prepared  for  the  new  force  which 
was  about  to  assail  it. 

74.  It  consisted  of  a  narrow  disc  of  land  surrounding 
the  Mediterranean  Sea.     That  sea  deserved  at  that  time 
the  name  it  bears,  for  the  world's  center  of  gravity,  which 
has  since  shifted  to  other  latitudes,  lay  in  it.     The  interest 
of  human  life  was  concentrated  in  the  southern  countries 
of  Europe,  the  portion  of  western  Asia  and  the  strip  of 
northern  Africa  which  form  its  shores.     In  this  little 
world  there  were  three  cities  which  divided  between  them 
the  interest  of  those  ages.     These  were  Rome,  Athens  and 
Jerusalem,  the  capitals  of  the  three  races — the  Romans, 
the  Greeks  and  the  Jews — which  in  every  sense  ruled  that 
old  world.     It  was  not  that  each  of  them  had  mastered  a 


THE    WORK    AWAITING    THE    WORKER   61 

third  part  of  the  circle  of  civilization,  but  each  of  them 
had  in  turn  diffused  itself  over  the  whole  of  it,  and  either 
still  held  its  grip  or  at  least  had  left  imperishable  traces 
of  its  presence. 

75.  The  Greeks  were  the  first  to  take  possession  of 
the  world.  They  were  the  people  of  cleverness  and  genius, 
the  perfect  masters  of  commerce,  literature  and  art.  In 
very  early  ages  they  displayed  the  instinct  for  coloniza- 
tion and  sent  forth  their  sons  to  find  new  abodes  on  the 
east  and  the  west,  far  from  their  native  home.  At  length 
there  arose  among  them  one  who  concentrated  in  himself 
the  strongest  tendencies  of  the  race  and  by  force  of  arms 
extended  the  dominion  of  Greece  to  the  borders  of  India. 
The  vast  empire  of  Alexander  the  Great  split  into  pieces 
at  his  death ;  but  a  deposit  of  Greek  life  and  influence 
remained  in  all  the  countries  over  which  the  deluge  of 
his  conquering  armies  had  swept.  Greek  cities,  such  as 
Antioch  in  Syria  and  Alexandria  in  Egypt,  flourished  all 
over  the  East ;  Greek  merchants  abounded  in  every  center 
of  trade ;  Greek  teachers  taught  the  literature  of  their 
country  in  many  lands ;  and — what  was  most  important 
of  all — the  Greek  language  became  the  general  vehicle 
ror  the  communication  of  the  more  serious  thought 
between  nation  and  nation.  Even  the  Jews  in  New 
Testament  times  read  their  own  Scriptures  in  a  Greek 
version,  the  original  Hebrew  having  become  a  dead 
language.  Perhaps  the  Greek  is  the  most  perfect  tongue 
the  world  has  known,  and  there  was  a  special  providence 
in  its  universal  diffusion  before  Christianity  needed  a 
medium  of  international  communication.  The  New 
Testament  was  written  in  Greek,  and,  wherever  the 
apostles  of  Christianity  traveled,  they  were  able  to  make 
themselves  understood  in  this  language. 


62  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

76.  The  turn  of  the  Romans  came  next  to  obtain 
possession  of  the  world.      Originally  a  small  clan  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  city  from  which  they  derived  their 
name,  they  gradually  extended  and  strengthened  them- 
selves and  acquired  such  skill   in  the  arts  of  war  and 
government  that  they  became  irresistible  conquerors  and 
marched  forth  in  every  direction  to  make  themselves  mas- 
ters of  the  globe.     They  subdued  Greece  itself  and,  flow- 
ing eastward,  seized  upon  the  countries  which  Alexander 
and  his  successors  had  ruled.     The  whole  known  world, 
indeed,  became  theirs  from  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  to  the 
utmost  East.     They  did  not  possess  the  genius  or  genial- 
ity of   the   Greeks;    their  qualities  were   strength  and 
justice ;  and  their  arts  were  not  those  of  the  poet  and  the 
thinker,  but  those  of  the  soldier  and  the  judge.     They 
broke  down  the  divisions  between  the  tribes  of  men  and 
compeUed  them  to  be  friendly  toward  each  other,  because 
they  were  all  alike  prostrate  beneath  one  iron  rule.     They 
pierced  the  countries  with  roads,  which  connected  them 
with  Rome  and  were  such  solid  triumphs  of  engineering 
skill  that  some  of  them  remain  to  this  day.     Along  these 
highways   the   message   of   the   gospel   ran.      Thus   the 
Romans  also  proved  to  be  pioneers  for  Christianity,  for 
their  authority  in  so  many  countries  afforded  to  its  first 
publishers  facility  of  movement  and  protection  from  the 
arbitrary  justice  of  local  tribunals. 

77.  Meanwhile  the  third  nation  of  antiquity  had  also 
completed  its  conquest  of  the  world.      Not  by  force  of 
arms  did  the  Jews  diffuse  themselves,  as  the  Greeks  and 
Romans   had   done.       For   centuries,   indeed,   they   had 
dreamed  of  the  coming  of  a  warlike  hero,  whose  prowess 
should  outshine  that  of  the  most  celebrated  Gentile  con- 
querors.     But  he  never  came :    and  their  occupation  of 


THE   WORK   AWAITING    THE   WORKER  63 

the  centers  of  civilization  had  to  take  place  in  a  mare 
silent  way. 

There  is  no  change  in  the  habits  of  any  nation  more 
striking  than  that  which  passed  over  the  Jewish  race  in 
that  interval  of  four  centuries  between  Malachi  and 
Matthew  of  which  we  have  no  record  in  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures. In  the  Old  Testament  we  see  the  Jews  pent  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  Palestine,  engaged  mainly  in  agri- 
cultural pursuits  and  jealously  guarding  themselves  from 
intermingling  with  foreign  nations.  In  the  New  Testa- 
ment we  find  them  still,  indeed,  clinging  with  a  desperate 
tenacity  to  Jerusalem  and  to  the  idea  of  their  own  sepa- 
rateness ;  but  their  habits  and  abodes  have  been  com- 
pletely changed:  they  have  given  up  agriculture  and 
betaken  themselves  with  extraordinary  eagerness  and  sue? 
cess  to  commerce ;  and  with  this  object  in  view  they  have 
diffused  themselves  everywhere — over  Africa,  Asia, 
Europe — and  there  is  not  a  city  of  any  importance  when* 
they  are  not  to  be  found.  By  what  steps  this  extraordi- 
nary change  came  about  it  were  hard  to  tell  and  long  to 
trace.  But  it  had  taken  place ;  and  this  turned  out  to 
be  a  circumstance  of  extreme  importance  for  the  early 
history  of  Christianity. 

Wherever  the  Jews  were  settled,  they  had  their  syna- 
gogues, their  sacred  Scriptures,  their  uncompromising 
belief  in  the  One  true  God.  Not  only  so :  their  syna- 
gogues everywhere  attracted  proselytes  from  the  surround- 
ing Gentile  populations.  The  heathen  religions  were  at 
that  period  in  a  state  of  utter  collapse.  The  smaller 
nations  had  lost  faith  in  their  deities,  because  they  had 
not  been  able  to  defend  them  from  the  victorious  Greeks 
and  Romans.  But  the  conquerors  had  for  other  reasons 
equally  lost  faith  in  their  own  gods.  It  was  an  age  of 
ikepticism,  religious  decay  and  moral  corruption.  But 


6*  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

there  are  always  natures  which  must  possess  a  faith  in 
which  they  can  trust.  These  were  in  search  of  a  religion, 
and  many  of  them  found  refuge  from  the  coarse  and 
incredible  myths  of  the  gods  of  polytheism  in  the  purity 
and  monotheism  of  the  Jewish  creed.  The  fundamental 
ideas  of  this  creed  are  also  the  foundations  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  Wherever  the  messengers  of  Christianity 
traveled,  they  met  with  people  with  whom  they  had  many 
religious  conceptions  in  common.  Their  first  sermons 
were  delivered  in  synagogues,  their  first  converts  were 
Jews  and  proselytes.  The  synagogue  was  the  bridge  by 
which  Christianity  crossed  over  to  the  heathen. 

78.  Such,  then,  was  the  world  which  Paul  was  setting 
out  to  conquer.  It  was  a  world  everywhere  pervaded 
with  these  three  influences.  But  there  were  two  other 
elements  of  population  which  require  to  be  kept  in  mind, 
as  both  of  them  supplied  numerous  converts  to  the  early 
preachers:  they  were  the  original  inhabitants  of  the 
various  countries ;  and  there  were  the  slaves,  who  were 
either  captives  taken  in  war  or  their  descendants,  and 
were  liable  to  be  shifted  from  place  to  place,  being  sold 
according  to  the  necessities  or  caprices  of  their  masters. 
A  religion  the  chief  boast  of  which  it  was  to  preach  glad 
tidings  to  the  poor  could  not  neglect  these  down-trodden 
classes,  and,  although  the  conflict  of  Christianity  with 
the  forces  of  the  time  which  had  possession  of  the  fate  of 
the  world  naturally  attracts  attention,  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  its  best  triumph  has  always  consisted  in  the 
sweetening  and  brightening  of  the  lot  of  the  humble. 


CHAPTER  VI 
HIS  MISSIONARY  TRAVELS 


Paragraphs  79-114. 

79-88.  THE  FIRST  JOURNEY.  79,  80.  His  Com- 
panions. 81.  Cyprus.  Change  of  his  Name.  82-87. 
The  Mainland  of  Asia  Minor.  83.  Desertion  of  Mark. 
84.  Antioch-in-Pisidia  and  Iconium.  85-87.  Lystra 
and  Derbe.  88.  Return. 

89-108.  THE  SECOND  JOURNEY.  90,91.  Separa- 
tion from  Barnabas.  92,  93.  Unrecorded  Half  of 
the  Journey.  94-96.  Crossing  to  Europe.  97-108. 
Greece.  97-101.  Macedonia.  99.  Women  and  the 
Gospel.  100.  Liberality  of  Churches.  102-108. 
Achaia.  103-105.  Athens.  106-108.  Corinth. 

1O9-114.    THE    THIRD    JOURNEY.     Ephesus, 
lemic  against  Superstition. 


THE  FIRST  JOURNEY 


79.  Paul's  Companions. — From  the  beginning  it 
had  been  the  wont  of  the  preachers  of  Christianity  not  to 
go  alone  on  their  expeditions,  but  two  by  two.      Paul 
improved  on  this  practise  by  going  generally  with  two 
companions,  one  of  them   being   a  younger  man,  who 
perhaps  took  charge  of  the  traveling  arrangements.     On 
his  first  journey  his  comrades  were  Barnabas  and  John 
Mark,  the  nephew  of  Barnabas. 

80.  We  have  already  seen  that   Barnabas  may  be 
called  the  discoverer  of  Paul ;  and,  when  they  set  out  on 
this  journey  together,  he  was  probably  in  a  position  to 
act  as  Paul's  patron ;  for  he  enjoyed  much  consideration 

66 


66  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

in  the  Christian  community.  Converted  apparently  on 
the  day  of  Pentecost,  he  had  played  a  leading  part  in  the 
subsequent  events.  He  was  a  man  of  high  social  posi- 
tion, a  landed  proprietor  in  the  island  of  Cyprus ;  and  he 
sacrificed  all  to  the  new  movement  into  which  he  had  been 
drawn.  In  the  outburst  of  enthusiasm  which  led  the  first 
Christians  to  share  their  property  with  one  another,  he 
sold  his  estate  and  laid  the  money  at  the  apostles1  feet. 
He  was  constantly  employed  thereafter  in  the  work  of 
preaching,  and  he  had  so  remarkable  a  gift  of  eloquence 
that  he  was  called  the  Son  of  Exhortation.  An  incident 
which  occurred  at  a  later  stage  of  this  journey  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  the  appearance  of  the  two  men.  When  the 
inhabitants  of  Lystra  mistook  them  for  gods,  they  called 
Barnabas  Jupiter  and  Paul  Mercury.  Now,  in  ancient 
art  Jupiter  was  always  represented  as  a  tall,  majestic  and 
benignant  figure,  while  Mercury  was  the  small,  swift 
messenger  of  the  father  of  gods  and  men.  Probably  it 
appeared,  therefore,  that  the  large,  gracious,  paternal 
Barnabas  was  the  head  and  director  of  the  expedition, 
while  Paul,  little  and  eager,  was  the  subordinate.  The 
direction  in  which  they  set  out,  too,  was  the  one  which 
Barnabas  might  naturally  have  been  expected  to  choose. 
They  went  first  to  Cyprus,  the  island  where  his  property 
had  been  and  many  of  his  friends  still  were.  It  lay 
eighty  miles  to  the  southwest  of  Seleucia,  the  seaport  of 
Antioch,  and  they  might  reach  it  on  the  very  day  they 
left  their  headquarters. 

81.  Cyprus — Change  of  Name. — But,  although 
Barnabas  appeared  to  be  the  leader,  the  good  man 
probably  knew  already  that  the  humble  words  of  the 
Baptist  might  be  used  by  himself  with  reference  to  his 
companion,  "He  must  increase,  but  I  must  decrease.*' 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  67 

At  all  events,  as  soon  as  their  work  began  in  earnest,  this 
was  shown  to  be  the  relation  between  them.  After  going 
through  the  length  of  the  island,  from  east  to  west,  evan- 
gelizing, they  arrived  at  Paphos,  its  chief  town,  and  there 
the  problems  they  had  come  out  to  face  met  them  in  the 
most  concentrated  form. 

Paphos  was  the  seat  of  the  worship  of  Venus,  the  god- 
dess of  love,  who  was  said  to  have  been  born  of  the  foam 
of  the  sea  at  this  very  spot ;  and  her  worship  was  carried 
on  with  the  wildest  licentiousness.  It  was  a  picture  in 
miniature  of  Greece  sunk  in  moral  decay.  Paphos  was 
also  the  seat  of  the  Roman  government,  and  in  the  pro- 
consular chair  sat  a  man,  Sergius  Paulus,  whose  noble 
character  but  utter  lack  of  certain  faith  formed  a  com- 
panion picture  of  the  inability  of  Rome  at  that  epoch 
to  meet  the  deepest  necessities  of  her  best  sons.  In  the 
proconsular  court,  playing  upon  the  inquirer's  credulity, 
a  Jewish  sorcerer  and  quack,  named  Elymas,  was  flourish- 
ing, whose  arts  were  a  picture  of  the  lowest  depths  to 
which  the  Jewish  character  could  sink.  The  whole  scene 
was  a  kind  of  miniature  of  the  world  the  evils  of  which 
the  missionaries  had  set  forth  to  cure. 

In  the  presence  of  these  exigencies  Paul  unfolded  for 
the  first  time  the  mighty  powers  which  lay  in  him.  An 
access  of  the  Spirit  seizing  him  and  enabling  him  to  over- 
come all  obstacles,  he  covered  the  Jewish  magician  with 
disgrace,  converted  the  Roman  governor,  and  founded  in 
the  town  a  Christian  church  in  opposition  to  the  Greek 
shrine.  From  that  hour  Barnabas  sank  into  the  second 
place  and  Paul  took  his  natural  position  as  the  head  of 
the  mission.  We  no  longer  read,  as  heretofore,  of 
"Barnabas  and  Saul,"  but  always  of  "Paul  and  Barna- 
bas. ' '  The  subordinate  had  become  the  leader ;  and,  a* 
if  to  mark  that  he  had  become  a  new  man  and  taken  a 


68  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

new  place,  he  was  no  longer  called  by  the  Jewish  name 
of  Saul,  which  up  to  this  point  he  had  borne,  but  by  the 
name  of  Paul,  which  has  ever  since  been  his  designation 
among  Christians. 

82.  The  Mainland  of  Asia. — The  next  move  was  as 
obviously  the  choice  of  the  new  leader  as  the  first  one  had 
been  due  to   Barnabas.      They  struck  across  the  sea  to 
Perga,  a  town  near  the  middle  of  the  southern  coast  of 
Asia  Minor,  then   right  up,  a  hundred   miles,  into  the 
mainland,  and  thence  eastward  to  a  point  almost  straight 
north  of  Tarsus.     This  route  carried  them  in  a  kind  of 
half  circuit  through  the  districts  of  Pamphylia,  Pisidia 
and  Lycaonia,  which  border,  to  the  west  and  north,  on 
Cilicia,  Paul's  native  province ;  so  that,  if  it  be  the  case 
that   he  had  evangelized   Cilicia   already,  he   was   now 
merely  extending  his  labors  to  the  nearest  surrounding 
regions. 

83.  At  Perga,  the  starting-point  of  this  second  half 
of  the  journey,  a  misfortune  befell  the  expedition:  John 
Mark  deserted  his  companions  and  sailed  for  home.      It 
may  be  that  the  new  position  assumed  by  Paul  had  given 
him  offense,  though  his  generous  uncle  felt  no  such  grudge 
at  that  which  was  the  ordinance  of  nature  and  of  God. 
But  it  is  more  likely  that  the  cause  of  his  withdrawal  was 
dismay  at  the  dangers  upon  which  they  were  about  to 
enter.     These  were  such  as  might  well  strike  terror  even 
into  resolute  hearts.      Behind  Perga  rose  the  snow-clad 
peaks  of  the  Taurus  Mountains,  which  had  to  be  pene- 
trated through  narrow  passes,  where  crazy  bridges  spanned 
the   rushing  torrents,  and   the  castles  of   robbers,   who 
watched  for  passing  travelers  to  pounce  upon,  were  hid- 
den in  positions  so  inaccessible  that  even  the  Roman  arms 


HIS   MISSIONARY   TRAVELS  69 

had  not  been  able  to  exterminate  them.  When  these 
preliminary  dangers  were  surmounted,  the  prospect  be- 
yond was  anything  but  inviting :  the  country  to  the  north 
of  the  Taurus  was  a  vast  tableland,  more  elevated  than 
the  summits  of  the  highest  mountains  in  this  country, 
and  scattered  over  with  solitary  lakes,  irregular  mountain 
masses  and  tracts  of  desert,  where  the  population  was  rude 
and  spoke  an  almost  endless  variety  of  dialects.  These 
things  terrified  Mark,  and  he  drew  back.  But  his  com- 
panions took  their  lives  in  their  hand  and  went  forward. 
To  them  it  was  enough  that  there  were  multitudes  of 
perishing  souls  there,  needing  the  salvation  of  which  they 
were  the  heralds ;  and  Paul  knew  that  there  were  scat- 
tered handfuls  of  his  own  people  in  these  remote  regions 
of  the  heathen. 

84.  Can  we  conceive  what  their  procedure  was  like  in 
the  towns  they  visited  ?  It  is  difficult,  indeed,  to  picture 
it  to  ourselves.  As  we  try  to  see  them  with  the  mind's 
eye  entering  any  place,  we  naturally  think  of  them  as  the 
most  important  personages  in  it ;  to  us  their  entry  is  as 
august  as  if  they  had  been  carried  on  a  car  of  victory. 
Very  different,  however,  was  the  reality.  They  entered 
a  town  as  quietly  and  as  unnoticed  as  any  two  strangers 
who  may  walk  into  one  of  our  towns  any  morning.  Their 
first  carv  was  to  get  a  lodging ;  and  then  they  had  to  seek 
for  employment,  for  they  worked  at  their  trade  wherever 
they  went.  Nothing  could  be  more  commonplace.  Who 
could  dream  that  this  travel -stained  man,  going  from  one 
tentmaker's  door  to  another,  seeking  for  work,  was  carry- 
ing the  future  of  the  world  beneath  his  robe ! 

When  the  Sabbath  came  round,  they  would  cease  from 
toil,  like  the  other  Jews  in  the  place,  and  repair  to  the 
synagogue.  They  joined  in  the  psalms  and  prayers  with 


70  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

the  other  worshipers  and  listened  to  the  reading  of  the 
Scriptures.  After  this  the  presiding  elder  might  ask  if 
any  one  present  had  a  word  of  exhortation  to  deliver. 
This  was  Paul's  opportunity.  He  would  rise  and,  with 
outstretched  hand,  begin  to  speak.  At  once  the  audience 
recognized  the  accents  of  the  cultivated  rabbi :  and  the 
strange  voice  won  their  attention.  Taking  up  the  pas- 
sages which  had  been  read,  he  would  soon  be  moving 
forward  on  the  stream  of  Jewish  history,  till  he  led  up  to 
the  astounding  announcement  that  the  Messiah  hoped  for 
by  their  fathers  and  promised  by  their  prophets  had  come ; 
and  he  had  been  sent  among  them  as  His  apostle.  Then 
would  follow  the  story  of  Jesus ;  it  was  true,  He  had  been 
rejected  by  the  authorities  of  Jerusalem  and  crucified, 
but  this  could  be  shown  to  have  taken  place  in  accordance 
with  prophecy ;  and  His  resurrection  from  the  dead  was 
an  infallible  proof  that  He  had  been  sent  of  God :  now 
He  was  exalted  a  Prince  and  a  Saviour  to  give  repentance 
unto  Israel  and  the  remission  of  sins. 

We  can  easily  imagine  the  sensation  produced  by  such 
a  sermon  from  such  a  preacher  and  the  buzz  of  conversa- 
tion which  would  arise  among  the  congregation  after  the 
dismissal  of  the  synagogue.  During  the  week  it  would 
become  the  talk  of  the  town :  and  Paul  was  willing  to 
converse  at  his  work  or  in  the  leisure  of  the  evening  with 
any  who  might  desire  further  information.  Next  Sabbath 
the  synagogue  would  be  crowded,  not  with  Jews  only, 
but  Gentiles  also,  who  were  curious  to  see  the  strangers ; 
and  Paul  now  unfolded  the  secret  that  salvation  by  Jesus 
Christ  was  as  free  to  Gentiles  as  to  Jews.  This  was  gener- 
ally the  signal  for  the  Jews  to  contradict  and  blaspheme ; 
and,  turning  his  back  on  them,  Paul  addressed  himself  to 
the  Gentiles.  But  meantime  the  fanaticism  of  the  Jews 
was  roused,  who  either  stirred  up  the  mob  or  secured  the 


HIS   MISSIONARY   TRAVELS  71 

interest  of  the  authorities  against  the  strangers ;  and  in  a 
storm  of  popular  tumult  or  by  the  breath  of  authority  the 
messengers  of  the  gospel  were  swept  out  of  the  town. 
This  was  what  happened  at  Antioch  in  Pisidia,  their  first 
halting-place  in  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor ;  and  it  was 
repeated  in  a  hundred  instances  in  Paul's  subsequent 
life. 

85.  Sometimes  they  did  not  get  off  so  easily.     At 
Lystra,  for  example,  they  found  themselves  in  a  popula- 
tion of  rude  heathens,  who  were  at  first  so  charmed  with 
Paul's  winning  words  and  impressed  with  the  appearance 
of  the  preachers  that  they  took  them  for  gods  and  were 
on  the  point  of  offering  sacrifice  to  them.     This  filled 
the  missionaries  with  horror,  and  they  rejected  the  inten- 
tions of  the  crowd  with  unceremonious  haste.     A  sudden 
revolution  in  the  popular  sentiment  ensued,  and  Paul  was 
stoned  and  cast  out  of  the  city  apparently  dead. 

86.  Such  were  the  scenes  of  excitement  and   peril 
through  which  they  had  to  pass  in  this  remote  region. 
But  their  enthusiasm  never  flagged ;    they  never  thought 
of  turning  back,  but,  when  they  were  driven  out  of  one 
city,   moved  forward  to  another.      And,  total   as  their 
discomfitures  sometimes  appeared,  they  quitted  no  city 
without  leaving  behind  them  a  little  band  of  converts — 
perhaps  a  few  Jews,  a  few  more  proselytes,  and  a  number 
of  Gentiles.     The  gospel  found  those  for  whom  it  was 
.^tended — penitents  burdened  with  sin,  souls  dissatisfied 

rith  the  world  and  their  ancestral  religion,  hearts  yearn- 
tog  for  divine  sympathy  and  love;  "as  many  as  were 
Irdained  to  eternal  life  believed;"  and  these  formed  in 
tvery  city  the  nucleus  of  a  Christian  church.  Even  at 
Lystra,  where  the  defeat  seemed  so  utter,  a  little  group  of 
faithful  hearts  gathered  round  the  mangled  body  of  the 


72  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

apostle  outside  the  city  gates;  Eunice  and  Lois  were 
there  with  tender  womanly  ministrations;  and  young 
Timothy,  as  he  looked  down  on  the  pale  and  bleeding 
face,  felt  his  heart  forever  knit  to  the  hero  who  had  cour- 
age to  suffer  to  the  death  for  his  faith. 

87.  In  the  intense  love  of  such  hearts  Paul  received 
compensation  for  suffering  and  injustice.  If,  as  some 
suppose,  the  people  of  this  region  formed  part  of  the 
Galatian  churches,  we  see  from  his  Epistle  to  them  the 
kind  of  love  they  gave  him.  They  received  him,  he  says, 
as  an  angel  of  God,  nay,  as  Jesus  Christ  Himself ;  they 
were  ready  to  have  plucked  out  their  eyes  and  given  them 
to  him.  They  were  people  of  rude  kindness  and  headlong 
impulses ;  their  native  religion  was  one  of  excitement  and 
demonstrativeness,  and  they  carried  these  characteristics 
into  the  new  faith  they  had  adopted.  They  were  filled 
with  joy  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  the  revival  spread  on 
every  hand  with  great  rapidity,  till  the  word,  sounding 
out  from  the  little  Christian  communities,  was  heard  all 
along  the  slopes  of  Taurus  and  down  the  glens  of  the 
Cestrus  and  Halys. 

Paul's  warm  heart  could  not  but  enjoy  such  an  out- 
burst of  affection.  He  responded  to  it  by  giving  in 
return  his  own  deep  love.  The  towns  mentioned  in  their 
itinerary  are  the  Pisidian  Antioch,  Iconium,  Lystra,  and 
Derbe ;  but,  when  at  the  last  of  them  he  had  finished  his 
course  and  the  way  lay  open  to  him  to  descend  by  the 
Cilician  Gates  to  Tarsus  and  thence  get  back  to  Antioch, 
he  preferred  to  return  by  the  way  he  had  come.  In  spite 
of  the  most  imminent  danger  he  revisited  all  these  places. 
to  see  his  dear  converts  again  and  cheer  them  in  face  of 
persecution ;  and  he  ordained  elders  in  every  city  to  watch 
over  the  churches  in  his  absence. 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  73 

88.  The   Return. — At   length  the  missionaries  de- 
scended again  from  these  uplands  to  the  southern  coast 
and  sailed  back  to  Antioch,  from  which  they  Lad  set  out. 
Worn  with  toil  and  suffering,  but  flushed  with  the  joy  of 
success,  they  appeared  among  those  who  had  sent  them 
forth  and  had  doubtless  been  following  them  with  their 
prayers ;    and,  like  discoverers  returned  from  the  finding 
of  a  new  Country,  they  related  the  miracles  of  grace  they 
had  witnessed  in  the  strange  world  of  the  heathen. 

THE  SECOND  JOURNEY 

89.  In  his  first  journey  Paul  may  be  said  to  have 
been  only  trying  his  wings ;    for  his  course,  adventurous 
though  it  was,  only  swept  in  a  limited  circle  round  his 
native  province.      In  his  second  journey  he  performed  a 
far  more  distant  and  perilous  flight.      Indeed,  this  jour- 
ney was  not  only  the  greatest  he  achieved  but  perhaps 
the  most  momentous  recorded  in  the  annals  of  the  human 
race.      In  its  issues  it  far  outrivaled  the  expedition  of 
Alexander   the    Great,  when   he  carried   the  arms   and 
civilization  of  Greece  into  the  heart  of  Asia,  or  that  of 
Caesar,  when  he  landed  on  the  shores  of  Britain,  or  even 
the  voyage  of  Columbus,  when  he  discovered  a  new  world. 
Yet,  when  he  set  out  on  it,  he  had  no  idea  of  the  magni- 
tude which  it  was  to  assume  or  even  the  direction  which 
it  was  to  take.      After  enjoying  a  short  rest  at  the  close 
of  the  first   journey,  he  said   to   his  fellow-missionary, 
"Let  us  go  again  and  visit  our  brethren  in  every  city 
where  we  have  preached  the  word  of  the  Lord  and  see 
how  they  do. ' '     It  was  the  parental  longing  to  see  his 
spiritual  children  which  was  drawing  him ;  but  God  had 
far  more  extensive  designs,  which  opened  up  before  him 
as  he  went  forward. 


74  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

90.  Separation    from    Barnabas. — Unfortunately 
the  beginning  of  this  journey  was  marred  by  a  dispute 
between  the  two  friends  who  meant  to  perform  it  together. 
The  occasion  of  their  difference  was  the  offer  of  John 
Mark  to  accompany  them.      No  doubt  when  this  young 
man  saw  Paul  and  Barnabas  returning  safe  and  sound 
from  the  undertaking  which  he  had  deserted,  he  recog- 
nized what  a  mistake  he  had  made ;    and  he  now  wished 
to  retrieve  his  error  by  rejoining  them.      Barnabas  natur- 
ally wished   to   take   his   nephew,  but    Paul   absolutely 
refused.     The  one  missionary,  a  man  of  easy  kindliness, 
urged  the  duty  of  forgiveness  and  the  effect  which  a  rebuff 
might  have  on  a  beginner ;  while  the  other,  full  of  zeal 
for  God,  represented  the  danger  of  making  so  sacred  a 
work  in  any  way  dependent  on  one  who  could  not  be 
relied  upon,  for  "confidence  in  an  unfaithful  man  in  time 
of  trouble  is  like  a  broken  tooth  or  a  foot  out  of  joint." 

We  cannot  now  tell  which  of  them  was  in  the  right 
or  if  both  were  partly  wrong.  Both  of  them,  at  all 
events,  suffered  for  it :  Paul  had  to  part  in  anger  from 
the  man  to  whom  he  probably  owed  more  than  to  any 
other  human  being ;  and  Barnabas  was  separated  from 
the  grandest  spirit  of  the  age. 

91.  They  never  met  again.     This  was  not  due,  how- 
ever, to  an  unchristian  continuation  of  the  quarrel ;    for 
the  heat  of  passion  soon  cooled  down  and  the  old  love 
returned.      Paul  mentions  Barnabas  with  honor  in  his 
writings,  and  in  the  very  last  of  his  Epistles  he  sends  for 
Mark  to  come  to  him  at  Rome,  expressly  adding  that  he 
is  profitable  to  him  for  ministry — the  very  thing  he  had 
disbelieved  about  him  before.      In  the  meantime,  how- 
ever, their  difference  separated  them.     They  agreed  to 
divide  between  them   the  region  they  had  evangelized 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  75 

together.  Barnabas  and  Mark  went  away  to  Cyprus; 
and  Paul  undertook  to  visit  the  churches  on  the  main- 
land. As  companion  he  took  with  him  Silas,  or  Silvanus, 
in  the  place  of  Barnabas ;  and  he  had  not  proceeded  far 
on  his  new  journey  when  he  met  with  one  to  take  the 
place  of  Mark.  This  was  Timothy,  a  convert  he  had 
made  at  Lystra  in  his  first  journey;  he  was  youthful  and 
gentle ;  and  he  continued  a  faithful  companion  and  a 
constant  comfort  to  the  apostle  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

92.  Unrecorded  Work. — In  pursuance  of  the  purpose 
with  which  he  had  set  out,  Paul  began  this  journey  by 
revisiting  the  churches  in  the  founding  of  which  he  had 
taken  part.      Beginning  at  Antioch  and  proceeding  in  a 
northwesterly  direction,  he  did  this  work  in  Syria,  Cilicia 
and  other  parts,  till  he  reached  the  center  of  Asia  Minor, 
where  the  primary  object  of  his  journey  was  completed. 
But,  when  a  man  is  on  the  right  road,  all  sorts  of  oppor- 
tunities  open   up   before   him.     When   he   had    passed 
through  the  provinces  which  he  had  visited  before,  new 
desires  to  penetrate  still  farther  began  to  fire  his  mind, 
and  Providence  opened  up  the  way. 

He  still  went  forward  in  the  same  direction  through 
Phrygia  and  Galatia.  Bithynia,  a  large  province  lying 
along  the  shore  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  Asia,  a  densely 
populated  province  in  the  west  of  Asia  Minor,  seemed  to 
invite  him  and  he  wished  to  enter  them.  But  the  Spirit 
who  guided  his  footsteps  indicated,  by  some  means  un- 
known to  us,  that  these  provinces  were  shut  to  him  in  the 
meantime ;  and,  pushing  onward  in  the  direction  in  which 
tis  divine  Guide  permitted  him  to  go,  he  found  himself 
at  Troas,  a  town  on  the  northwest  coast  of  Asia  Minor. 

93.  Thus  he  had  traveled  from  Antioch  in  the  south- 


76  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

east  to  Troas  in  the  northwest  of  Asia  Minor,  a  distance 
as  far  as  from  Land's  End  to  John  o'  Groat's,  evangel- 
izing all  the  way.  It  must  have  taken  months,  perhaps 
even  years.  Yet  of  this  long,  laborious  period  we  possess 
no  details  whatever,  except  such  features  of  his  intercourse 
with  the  Galatians  as  may  be  gathered  from  the  Epistle 
to  that  church.  The  truth  is  that,  thrilling  as  are  the 
notices  of  Paul's  career  given  in  the  Acts,  this  record  is 
a  very  meager  and  imperfect  one,  and  his  life  was  far 
fuller  of  adventure,  of  labors  and  sufferings  for  Christ, 
than  even  Luke's  narrative  would  lead  us  to  suppose. 
The  plan  of  the  Acts  is  to  tell  only  what  was  most  novel 
and  characteristic  in  each  journey,  while  it  passes  over, 
for  instance,  all  his  repeated  visits  to  the  same  scenes. 
There  are  thus  great  blanks  in  the  history,  which  were 
in  reality  as  full  of  interest  as  the  portions  of  his  life 
which  are  fully  described. 

Of  this  there  is  a  startling  proof  in  an  Epistle  which 
he  wrote  within  the  period  covered  by  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles.  His  argument  calling  upon  him  to  enumerate 
some  of  his  outstanding  adventures,  ' '  Are  they  ministers 
of  Christ?"  he  asks,  "I  am  more;  in  labors  more  abun- 
dant, in  stripes  above  measure,  in  prisons  more  frequent, 
in  deaths  oft.  Of  the  Jews  five  times  received  I  forty 
stripes  save  one.  Thrice  was  I  beaten  with  rods.  Once 
was  I  stoned.  Thrice  I  suffered  shipwreck.  A  night 
and  a  day  have  I  been  in  the  deep.  In  journeyings 
often,  in  perils  of  water,  in  perils  of  robbers,  in  perils  by 
mine  own  countrymen,  in  perils  by  the  heathen,  in  perils 
in  the  city,  in  perils  in  the  wilderness,  in  perils  in  the 
sea,  in  perils  among  false  brethren ;  in  weariness  and 
painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in  hunger  and  thirst,  in 
fastings  often,  in  cold  and  nakedness. ' ' 

Now,  of   the  items  of  this  extraordinary  catalogue 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  77 

the  book  of  Acts  mentions  very  few :  of  the  five  Jewish 
scourgings  it  notices  not  one,  of  the  three  Roman  beat- 
ings only  one ;  the  one  stoning  it  records,  but  not  one  of 
the  three  shipwrecks,  for  the  shipwreck  so  fully  detailed 
in  the  Acts  happened  later.  It  was  no  part  of  the  design 
of  Luke  to  exaggerate  the  figure  of  the  hero  he  was  paint- 
ing ;  his  brief  and  modest  narrative  comes  far  short  even 
of  the  reality ;  and,  as  we  pass  over  the  few  simple  words 
into  which  he  condenses  the  story  of  months  or  years,  our 
imagination  requires  to  be  busy,  filling  up  the  outline 
with  toils  and  pains  at  least  equal  to  those  the  memory 
of  which  he  has  preserved. 

94.  Crossing  to  Europe. — It  would  appear  that 
Paul  reached  Troas  under  the  direction  of  the  guiding 
Spirit  without  being  aware  whither  his  steps  were  next 
to  be  turned.  But  could  he  doubt  what  the  divine  in- 
tention was  when,  gazing  across  the  silver  streak  of  the 
Hellespont,  he  beheld  the  shores  of  Europe  on  the  other 
side?  He  was  now  within  the  charmed  circle  where  for 
ages  civilization  had  had  her  home ;  and  he  could  not  be 
entirely  ignorant  of  those  stories  of  war  and  enterprise 
and  those  legends  of  love  and  valor  which  have  made  it 
forever  bright  and  dear  to  the  heart  of  mankind. 

At  only  four  miles'  distance  lay  the  Plain  of  Troy, 
where  Europe  and  Asia  encountered  each  other  in  the 
struggle  celebrated  in  Homer's  immortal  song.  Not  far 
off  Xerxes,  sitting  on  a  marble  throne,  reviewed  the  three 
millions  of  Asiatics  with  which  he  meant  to  bring  Europe 
to  his  feet.  On  the  other  side  of  that  narrow  strait  lay 
Greece  and  Rome,  the  centers  from  which  issued  the 
learning,  the  commerce  and  the  armies  which  governed 
the  world.  Could  his  heart,  so  ambitious  for  the  glory 
of  Christ,  fail  to  be  fired  with  the  desire  to  cast  himself 


78  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

upon  these  strongholds,  or  could  he  doubt  that  the  Spirit 
was  leading  him  forward  to  this  enterprise?  He  knew 
that  Greece,  with  all  her  wisdom,  lacked  that  knowledge 
which  makes  wise  unto  salvation,  and  that  the  Romans, 
though  they  were  the  conquerors  of  this  world,  did  not 
know  the  way  of  winning  an  inheritance  in  the  world 
that  is  to  come ;  but  in  his  breast  he  carried  the  secret 
which  they  both  required. 

95.  It  may  have  been  such  thoughts,  dimly  moving 
in  his  mind,  that  projected  themselves  into  the  vision 
which  he  saw  at  Troas ;  or  was  it  the  vision  which  first 
awakened  the  idea  of  crossing  to  Europe?     As  he  lay 
asleep,  with  the  murmur  of  the  ^Egean  in  his  ears,  he  saw 
a  man  standing  on  the  opposite  coast,  on  which  he  had 
been  looking  before  he  went  to  rest,  beckoning  and  cry- 
ing, " Come  over  into  Macedonia  and  help  us."     That 
figure  represented  Europe,  and  its  cry  for  help  Europe's 
need  of  Christ.      Paul  recognized  in  it  a  divine  summons ; 
and  the  very  next  sunset  which  bathed  the  Hellespont  in 
its  golden  light  shone  upon  his  figure  seated  on  the  deck 
of  a  ship   the  prow  of  which  was   moving  toward  the 
shore  of  Macedonia. 

96.  In  this  passage  of  Paul,  from  Asia  to  Europe,  a 
great  providential  decision  was  taking  effect,  of  which, 
as  children  of  the  West,  we  cannot  think  without  the 
profoundest  thankfulness.      Christianity  arose   in   Asia 
and  among  an  Oriental  people ;  and  it  might  have  been 
expected  to  spread  first  among  those  races  to  which  the 
Jews  were  most  akin.      Instead  of  coming  west,  it  might 
have  gone   eastward.       It   might   have   penetrated   into 
Arabia  and  taken  possession  of  those  regions  where  the 
faith  of  the  False  Prophet  now  holds  sway.      It  might 
have  visited  the  wandering  tribes  of  Central  Asia  and, 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  79 

piercing  its  way  down  through  the  passes  of  the  Hima- 
layas, reared  its  temples  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges,  the 
Indus  and  the  Godavery.  It  might  have  traveled  farther 
east  to  deliver  the  swarming  millions  of  China  from  the 
cold  secularism  of  Confucius.  Had  it  done  so,  mission- 
aries from  India  and  Japan  might  have  been  coming  to 
England  and  America  at  the  present  day  to  tell  the 
story  of  the  Cross.  But  Providence  conferred  on  Europe 
A  blessed  priority,  and  the  fate  of  our  continent  was  de- 
cided when  Paul  crossed  the  ^Egean. 

97.  Macedonia. — As  Greece  lay  nearer  than  Rome 
to  the  shore  of  Asia,  its  conquest  for  Christ  was  the  great 
achievement  of  his  second  missionary  journey.      Like  the 
rest  of  the  world  it  was  at  that  time  under  the  sway  of 
Rome,  and  the  Romans  had  divided  it  into  two  provinces 
— Macedonia   in  the  north  and  Achaia  in   the   south. 
Macedonia  was,  therefore,  the  first  scene  of  Paul's  Greek 
mission.      It  was  traversed  from  east  to  west  by  a  great 
Roman  road,  along  which  the  missionary  moved,  and  the 
places  where  we  have  accounts  of  his  labors  are  Philippi, 
Thessalonica  and  Beroea. 

98.  The  Greek  character  in  this  northern  province 
was  much  less  corrupted  than  in  the  more  polished  society 
to  the  south.      In  the  Macedonian  population  there  still 
lingered  something  of  the  vigor  and  courage  which  four 
centuries  before  had  made  its  soldiers  the  conquerors  of 
the  world.     The  churches  which  Paul  founded  here  gave 
him  more  comfort  than  any  he  established   elsewhere. 
There  are  none  of  his  Epistles  more  cheerful  and  cordial 
than  those  to  the  Thessalonians  and  the    Philippians; 
and,  as  he  wrote  the  latter  late  in  life,  the  perseverance 
of  the  Macedonians  in  adhering  to  the  gospel  must  have 


80  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

been  as  remarkable  as  the  welcome  they  gave  it  at  the 
first.  At  Beroea  he  even  met  with  a  generous  and  open- 
minded  synagogue  of  Jews — the  rarest  occurrence  in  his 
experience. 

99.  Women  and  the  Gospel. — A  prominent  feature 
of  the  work  in  Macedonia  was  the  part  taken  in  it  by 
women.  Amid  the  general  decay  of  religions  through- 
out the  world  at  this  period,  many  women  everywhere 
sought  satisfaction  for  their  religious  instincts  in  the 
pure  faith  of  the  synagogue.  In  Macedonia,  perhaps 
on  account  of  its  sound  morality,  these  female  proselytes 
were  more  numerous  than  elsewhere ;  and  they  pressed  in 
large  numbers  into  the  Christian  Church.  This  was  a 
good  omen ;  it  was  a  prophecy  of  the  happy  change  in 
the  lot  of  women  which  Christianity  was  to  produce  in 
the  nations  of  the  West.  If  man  owes  much  to  Christ, 
woman  owes  still  more.  He  has  delivered  her  from  the 
degradation  of  being  man's  slave  and  plaything  and 
raised  her  to  be  his  friend  and  his  equal  before  Heaven ; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  a  new  glory  has  been  added  to 
Christ's  religion  by  the  fineness  and  dignity  with  which 
it  is  invested  when  embodied  in  the  female  character. 

These  things  were  vividly  illustrated  in  the  earliest 
footsteps  of  Christianity  on  our  continent.  The  first 
convert  in  Europe  was  a  woman,  at  the  first  Christian 
service  held  on  European  soil  the  heart  of  Lydia  being 
opened  to  receive  the  truth ;  and  the  change  which  passed 
upon  her  prefigured  what  woman  in  Europe  was  to  be- 
come under  the  influence  of  Christianity.  In  the  same 
town  of  Philippi  there  was  seen,  too,  at  the  same  time  an 
equally  representative  image  of  the  condition  of  woman 
in  Europe  before  the  gospel  reached  it,  in  a  poor  girl, 
of  a  spirit  of  divination  and  held  in  slavery  by 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  81 

men  who  were  making  gain  out  of  her  misfortune,  whom 
Paul  restored  to  sanity.  Her  misery  and  degradation 
were  a  symbol  of  the  disfiguration,  as  Lydia's  sweet  and 
benevolent  Christian  character  was  of  the  transfiguration 
of  womanhood. 


100.  Liberality  of  the  Churches. — Another  feature 
which  prominently  marked  the  Macedonian  churches  was 
a  spirit  of  liberality.     They  insisted  on  supplying  the 
bodily  wants  of  the  missionaries ;  and,  even  after  Paul 
had  left  them,  they  sent  gifts  to  meet  his  necessities  in 
other  towns.      Long  afterward,  when  he  was  a  prisoner 
at  Rome,  they  deputed  Epaphroditus,  one  of  their  teach- 
ers, to  carry  thither  similar  gifts  to  him  and  to  act  as  his 
attendant.      Paul  accepted  the  generosity  of  these  loyal 
hearts,  though  in  other  places  he  would  work  his  fingers 
to  the  bone  and  forego  his  natural  rest  rather  than  accept 
similar  favors.     Nor  was  their  willingness  to  give  due 
to  superior  wealth.      On  the  contrary,  they  gave  out  of 
deep  poverty.     They  were  poor  to  begin  with,  and  they 
were  made  poorer  by  the  persecutions  which  they  had  to 
endure.     These  were  very  severe  after  Paul  left,  and  they 
lasted  long.     Of  course  they  had  broken  first  of  all  on 
Paul  himself.     Though  he  was  so  successful  in  Macedo- 
nia, he  was  swept  out  of  every  town  at  last  like  the  off- 
scourings of  all  things.      It  was  generally  by  the  Jews 
that  this  was  brought  about.     They  either  fanaticized 
the  mob  against  him,  or  accused  him  before  the  Roman 
authorities  of  introducing  a  new  religion  or  disturbing 
the  peace  or  proclaiming  a  king  who  would  be  a  rival  to 
Caesar.     They  would  neither  go   into  the   kingdom  of 
heaven  themselves  nor  suffer  others  to  enter. 

101.  But  God  protected  His  servant.     At  Philippi 


82  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

He  delivered  him  from  prison  by  a  physical  miracle  and 
by  a  miracle  of  grace  still  more  marvelous  wrought  upon 
his  cruel  jailor;  and  in  other  towns  He  saved  him  by 
more  natural  means.  In  spite  of  bitter  opposition, 
churches  were  founded  in  city  after  city,  and  from  these 
the  glad  tidings  sounded  out  over  the  whole  province  of 
Macedonia. 

102.  Achaia. — When,  leaving  Macedonia,  Paul  pro- 
ceeded south  into  Achaia,  he  entered  the  real  Greece — 
the  paradise  of  genius  and  renown.     The  memorials  of 
the  country's  greatness  rose  around  him  on  his  journey. 
As  he  quitted  Beroea,  he  could  see  behind  him  the  snowy 
peaks  of   Mount  Olympus,  where  the  deities  of  Greece 
had  been  supposed  to  dwell.      Soon  he  was  sailing  past 
Thermopylae,  where  the  immortal  Three  Hundred  stood 
against  the  barbarian  myriads ;  and,  as  his  voyage  neared 
its  close,  he  saw  before  him  the  island  of  Salamis,  where 
again  the  existence  of  Greece  was  saved  from  extinction 
by  the  valor  of  her  sons. 

103.  Athens. — His  destination  was  Athens,  the  cap- 
ital of  the  country.     As  he  entered  the  city,  he  could  not 
be  insensible  to  the  great  memories  which  clung  to  its 
streets  and   monuments.      Here  the   human   mind   had 
blazed  forth  with  a  splendor  it  has  never  exhibited  else- 
where.     In  the  golden  age  of  its  history  Athens  possessed 
more  men  of  the  very  highest  genius  than  have  ever  lived 
in  any  other   city.     To  this  day  their  names  invest  it 
with  glory.      Yet  even  in  Paul's  day  the  living  Athens 
was  a  thing  of  the  past.      Four  hundred  years  had  elapsed 
since  its  golden  age,  and  in  the  course  of  these  centuries 
it  had  experienced  a  sad  decline.      Philosophy  had  de- 
generated into  sophistry,  art  into  dilettanteism,  oratory 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  88 

into  rhetoric,  poetry  into  versemaking.  It  was  a  city 
living  on  its  past.  Yet  it  still  had  a  great  name  and 
was  full  of  culture  and  learning  of  a  kind.  It  swarmed 
with  so-called  philosophers  of  different  schools,  and  with 
teachers  and  professors  of  every  variety  of  knowledge; 
and  thousands  of  strangers  of  the  wealthy  class,  collected 
from  all  parts  of  the  world,  lived  there  for  study  or  the 
gratification  of  their  intellectual  tastes.  It  still  repre- 
sented to  an  intelligent  visitor  one  of  the  great  factors  in 
the  life  of  the  world. 

104.  With  the  amazing  versatility  which  enabled  him 
to  be  all  things  to  all  men,  Paul  adapted  himself  to  this 
population  also.  In  the  market-place,  the  lounge  of  the 
learned,  he  entered  into  conversation  with  students  and 
philosophers,  as  Socrates  had  been  wont  to  do  on  the  same 
spot  five  centuries  before.  But  he  found  even  less  appe- 
tite for  the  truth  than  the  wisest  of  the  Greeks  had  met 
with.  Instead  of  the  love  of  truth  an  insatiable  intellec- 
tual curiosity  possessed  the  inhabitants.  This  made  them 
willing  enough  to  tolerate  the  advances  of  any  one  bring- 
ing before  them  a  new  doctrine ;  and,  as  long  as  Paul 
was  merely  developing  the  speculative  part  of  his  mes- 
sage, they  listened  to  him  with  pleasure.  Their  interest 
seemed  to  deepen,  and  at  last  a  multitude  of  them  con- 
veyed him  to  Mars'  Hill,  in  the  very  center  of  the  splen- 
dors of  their  city,  and  requested  a  full  statement  of  his 
faith.  He  complied  with  their  wishes  and  in  the  mag- 
nificent speech  he  there  made  them,  gratified  their  pecul- 
iar tastes  to  the  full,  as  in  sentences  of  the  noblest 
eloquence  he  unfolded  the  great  truths  of  the  unity  of 
God  and  the  unity  of  man,  which  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  Christianity.  But,  when  he  advanced  from  these  pre- 
liminaries to  touch  the  consciences  of  his  audience  and 


&4  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

address  them  about  their  own  salvation,  they  departed  in 
a  body  and  left  him  talking. 

105.  He  quitted  Athens  and  never  returned  to  it. 
Nowhere  else  had  he  so  completely  failed.      He  had  been 
accustomed  to  endure  the  most  violent  persecution  and  to 
rally  from  it  with  a  light  heart.      But  there  is  something 
worse  than  persecution  to  a  fiery  faith  like  his,  and  he 
had  to  encounter  it  here :  his  message  roused  neither  in- 
terest nor  opposition.      The  Athenians  never  thought  of 
persecuting  him ;  they  simply  did  not  care  what  the  bab- 
bler said ;    and  this  cold  disdain  cut  him  more  deeply 
than  the  stones  of  the  mob  or  the  lictors'  rods.     Never 
perhaps  was  he  so  much  depressed.     When  he  left  Athens, 
he  moved  on  to  Corinth,  the  other  great  city  of  Achaia ; 
and  he  tells  us  himself  that  he  arrived  there  in  weakness 
and  in  fear  and  in  much  trembling. 

106.  Corinth. — There  was  in  Corinth  enough  of  the 
spirit  of  Athens  to  prevent  these  feelings  from  being 
easily    assuaged.      Corinth   was   to   Athens   very   much 
what  Glasgow  is  to  Edinburgh.      The  one  was  the  com- 
mercial, the  other  the  intellectual  capital  of  the  country. 
Even  the  situations  of  the  two  places  in  Greece  resembled 
in  some  respects  those  of  these  two  cities  in  Scotland. 
But  the  Corinthians  also  were  full  of  disputatious  curios- 
ity and  intellectual  hauteur.       Paul  dreaded  the  same 
kind  of  reception  as  he  had  met  with  in  Athens.      Could 
it  be  that  these  were  people  for  whom  the  gospel  had  no 
message?     This  was  the  staggering  question  which  was 
making  him  tremble.     There  seemed  to  be  nothing  in 
them  on  which  the  gospel  could  take  hold :  they  appeared 
to  feel  no  wants  which  it  could  satisfy. 

107.  There  were  other  elements  of  discouragement  in 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  85 

Corinth.  It  was  the  Paris  of  ancient  times — a  city  rich 
and  luxurious,  wholly  abandoned  to  sensuality.  Vice 
displayed  itself  without  shame  in  forms  which  struck 
deadly  despair  into  Paul's  pure  Jewish  mind.  Could 
men  be  rescued  from  the  grasp  of  such  monstrous  vices? 
Besides,  the  opposition  of  the  Jews  rose  here  to  unusual 
virulence.  He  was  compelled  at  length  to  depart  from 
the  synagogue  altogether,  and  did  so  with  expressions  of 
strong  feeling.  Was  the  soldier  of  Christ  going  to  be 
driven  off  the  field  and  forced  to  confess  that  the  gospel 
was  not  suited  for  cultured  Greece?  It  looked  like  it. 

108.  But  the  tide  turned.  At  the  critical  moment 
Paul  was  visited  with  one  of  those  visions  which  were 
wont  to  be  vouchsafed  to  him  at  the  most  trying  and 
decisive  crises  of  his  history.  The  Lord  appeared  to  him 
in  the  night,  saying,  "Be  not  afraid,  but  speak,  and  hold 
not  thy  peace ;  for  I  am  with  thee,  and  no  man  shall  set 
on  thee  to  hurt  thee ;  for  I  have  much  people  in  this 
city. ' '  The  apostle  took  courage  again,  and  the  causes 
of  discouragement  began  to  clear  away.  The  opposition 
of  the  Jews  was  broken,  when  they  hurried  him  with  mob 
violence  before  the  Roman  governor,  Gallic,  but  were 
dismissed  from  the  tribunal  with  ignominy  and  disdain. 
The  very  president  of  the  synagogue  became  a  Christian, 
and  conversions  multiplied  among  the  native  Corinthians. 
Paul  enjoyed  the  solace  of  living  under  the  roof  of  two 
leal-hearted  friends  of  his  own  race  and  his  own  occupa- 
tion, Aquila  and  Priscilla.  He  remained  a  year  and  a 
half  in  the  city  and  founded  one  of  the  most  interesting 
of  his  churches,  thus  planting  the  standard  of  the  cross  in 
Achaia  also  and  proving  that  the  gospel  was  the  power  of 
God  unto  salvation  even  in  the  headquarters  of  the 
world's  wisdom. 


86  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 


THE  THIRD  JOURNEY 

109.  It  must  have  been  a  thrilling  story  Paul  had  to 
at  Jerusalem  and  Antioch  when  he  returned  from  his 

second  journey;  but  he  had  no  disposition  to  rest  on  his 
laurels,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he  set  out  on  his  third 
journey. 

110.  In  Asia. — It  might  have  been  expected  that, 
having   in   his   second   journey   planted   the   gospel   in 
Greece,  he  would  in  his  third  have  made  Rome  his  prin- 
cipal aim.      But,  if  the  map  be  referred  to,  it  will  be 
observed  that,  in  the  midst,  between  the  regions  of  Asia 
Minor  which  he  evangelized  during  his  first  journey  and 
the  provinces  of  Greece  in  which  he  planted  churches  in 
his  second  journey,  there  was  a  hiatus — the  populous 
province  of  Asia,  in  the  west  of  Asia  Minor.      It  was  on 
this  region  that  he  descended  in  his  third  journey.     Stay- 
ing for  no  less  than  three  years  in  Ephesus,  its  capital, 
he  effectively  filled  up  the  gap  and  connected  together  the 
conquests  of  his  former  campaigns.     This  journey  in- 
cluded, indeed,  at  its  beginning,  a  visitation  of  all  the 
churches  formerly  founded   in   Asia   Minor  and,  at   its 
close,  a  flying  visit  to  the  churches  of  Greece ;    but,  true 
to  his  plan  of  dwelling  only  on  what  was  new  in  each 
journey,  the  author  of  the  Acts  has  supplied  us  only  with 
the  details  relating  to  Ephesus. 

111.  Ephesus. — This   city   was   at    that    time   the 
Liverpool  of  the  Mediterranean.      It  possessed  a  splendid 
harbor,  in  which  was  concentrated  the  traffic  of  the  sea 
which   was  then  the  highway  of  the   nations;    and,  a? 
Liverpool  has  behind  her  the  great  towns  of  Lancashire, 
so  had   Ephesus  behind  and  around  her  such  cities  as 


HIS    MISSIONARY    TRAVELS  87 

those  mentioned  along  with  her  in  the  epistles  to  the 
churches  in  the  book  of  Revelation  —  Smyrna,  Pergamos, 
Thyatira,  Sardis,  Philadelphia,  and  Laodicea.  It  was  a 
city  of  vast  wealth,  and  it  was  given  over  to  every  kind 
of  pleasure,  the  fame  of  its  theater  and  race-course  being 
world-wide. 


.  But  Ephesus  was  still  more  famous  as  a  sacred 
city.  It  was  a  seat  of  the  worship  of  the  goddess  Diana, 
whose  temple  was  one  of  the  most  celebrated  shrines  of 
the  ancient  world.  This  temple  was  enormously  rich 
and  harbored  great  numbers  of  priests.  At  certain 
seasons  of  the  year  it  was  a  resort  for  flocks  of  pilgrims 
from  the  surrounding  regions;  and  the  inhabitants  of 
the  town  flourished  by  ministering  in  various  ways  to 
this  superstition.  The  goldsmiths  drove  a  trade  in  little 
silver  models  of  the  image  of  the  goddess  which  the 
temple  contained  and  which  was  said  to  have  fallen  from 
heaven.  Copies  of  the  mystic  characters  engraven  on  this 
ancient  relic  were  sold  as  charms.  The  city  swarmed 
with  wizards,  fortune-tellers,  interpreters  of  dreams  and 
other  gentry  of  the  like  kind,  who  traded  on  the  mari- 
ners, merchants  and  pilgrims  who  frequented  the  port. 

113.  Paul's  work  had  therefore  to  assume  the  form 
of  a  polemic  against  superstition.  He  wrought  such 
astonishing  miracles  in  the  name  of  Jesus  that  some  of 
the  Jewish  palterers  with  the  invisible  world  attempted 
to  cast  out  devils  by  invoking  the  same  name  ;  but  the 
attempt  issued  in  their  signal  discomfiture.  Other  pro- 
fessors of  magical  arts  were  converted  to  the  Christian 
faith  and  burnt  their  books.  The  vendors  of  supersti- 
tious objects  saw  their  trade  slipping  through  their 
fingers.  To  such  an  extent  did  this  go  at  one  of  the 
festivals  of  the  goddess  that  the  silversmiths,  whose  traffic 


88  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

in  little  images  had  been  specially  smitten,  organized  a 
riot  against  Paul,  which  took  place  in  the  theater  and 
was  so  successful  that  he  was  forced  to  quit  the  city. 

114.  But  he  did  not  go  before  Christianity  was  firmly 
established  in  Ephesus,  and  the  beacon  of  the  gospel  was 
twinkling  brightly  on  the  Asian  coast,  in  response  to  that 
which  was  shining  from  the  shores  of  Greece  on  the  other 
side  of  the  JEgeau.  We  have  a  monument  of  his  success 
in  the  churches  lying  all  around  Ephesus  which  St.  John 
addressed  a  few  years  afterward  in  the  Apocalypse ;  for 
they  were  probably  the  indirect  fruit  of  Paul's  labors. 
But  we  have  a  far  more  astonishing  monument  of  it  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians.  This  is  perhaps  the  pro- 
foundest  book  in  existence;  yet  its  author  evidently 
expected  the  Ephesians  to  understand  it.  If  the  orations 
of  Demosthenes,  with  their  closely  packed  arguments 
between  the  articulations  of  which  even  a  knife  cannot  be 
thrust,  be  a  monument  of  the  intellectual  greatness  of  the 
Greece  which  listened  to  them  with  pleasure ;  if  the  plays 
of  Shakspeare,  with  their  deep  views  of  life  and  their 
obscure  and  complex  language,  be  a  testimony  to  the 
strength  of  mind  of  the  Elizabethan  Age,  which  could 
enjoy  such  solid  fare  in  a  place  of  entertainment ;  then 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians,  which  sounds  the  lowest 
depths  of  Christian  doctrine  and  scales  the  loftiest  heights 
of  Christian  experience,  is  a  testimony  to  the  proficiency 
which  Paul's  converts  had  attained  under  his  preaching 
in  the  capital  of  Asia. 


CHAPTER  VII 
HIS  WRITINGS  AND  HIS  CHARACTER 


Paragraphs  115-127. 

115-11 9.  HIS  WHITINGS.  1 1 5, 1 1 6.  Principal  Liter- 
ary  Period.  117.  Form  of  his  Writings.  118.  His 
Style.  119.  Inspiration. 

120-127.  HIS  CHARACTER.  121.  Combination  of 
Natural  and  Spiritual. 

122-127.  Characteristics.  122.  Physique;  123.  Enter- 
prise; 124.  Influence  over  Men;  125.  Unselfishness; 
126.  Sense  of  having  a  Mission;  127.  Personal  De- 
votion to  Christ. 

115.  Principal  Literary  Period. — It  has  been  men- 
tioned that  the  third  missionary  journey  closed  with  a 
flying  visit  to  the  churches  of  Greece.     This  visit  lasted 
several  months ;  but  in  the  Acts  it  is  passed  over  in  two 
or  three  verses.      Probably  it  was   little  marked  with 
those  exciting  incidents  which  naturally  tempt  the  biog- 
rapher into  detail.     Yet  we  know  from  other  sources 
that  it  was  nearly  the  most  important  part  of  Paul's  life ; 
for  during  this  half-year  he  wrote  the  greatest  of  all  his 
Epistles,  that  to  the  Romans,  and  two  others  only  less 
important — that  to  the  Galatians  and  the  Second  to  the 
Corinthians. 

116.  We  have  thus  alighted  on  the  portion  of  his 
life  most  signalized  by  literary  work.      Overpowering  as 
is  the  impression  of  the  remarkableness  of  this  man  pro- 
duced by  following  him,  as  we  have  been  doing,  as  he 
hurries  from   province  to  province,  from  continent  to 

89 


90  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

continent,  over  land  and  sea,  in  pursuit  of  the  object  to 
which  he  was  devoted,  this  impression  is  immensely  deep- 
ened when  we  remember  that  he  was  at  the  same  time  the 
greatest  thinker  of  his  age,  if  not  of  any  age,  and,  in  the 
midst  of  his  outward  labors,  was  producing  writings 
which  have  ever  since  been  among  the  mightiest  intel- 
lectual forces  of  the  world,  and  are  still  growing  in  their 
influence. 

In  this  respect  he  rises  sheer  above  all  other  evangel- 
ists and  missionaries.  Some  of  them  may  have  ap- 
proached him  in  certain  respects — Xavier  or  Livingstone 
in  the  world-conquering  instinct,  St.  Bernard  or  White- 
field  in  earnestness  and  activity.  But  few  of  these  men 
added  a  single  new  idea  to  the  world's  stock  of  beliefs, 
whereas  Paul,  while  at  least  equaling  them  in  their  own 
special  line,  gave  to  mankind  a  new  world  of  thought. 
If  his  Epistles  could  perish,  the  loss  to  literature  would 
be  the  greatest  possible  with  only  one  exception — that  of 
the  Gospels  which  record  the  life,  the  sayings  and  the 
death  of  our  Lord.  They  have  quickened  the  mind  of 
the  Church  as  no  other  writings  have  done,  and  scattered 
in  the  soil  of  the  world  hundreds  of  seeds  the  fruits  of 
which  are  now  the  general  possession  of  mankind.  Out 
of  them  have  been  brought  the  watchwords  of  progress  in 
every  reformation  which  the  Church  has  experienced. 
When  Luther  awoke  Europe  from  the  slumber  of  cen- 
turies, it  was  a  word  of  Paul  which  he  uttered  with  his 
mighty  voice:  and  when,  one  hundred  years  ago,  our 
own  country  was  revived  from  almost  universal  spiritual 
death,  she  was  called  by  the  voices  of  men  who  had  redis- 
covered the  truth  for  themselves  in  the  pages  of  Paul. 

117.  Form  of  his  Writings. — Yet  in  penning  his 
Epistles  Paul  may  himself  have  had  little  idea  of  the 


HIS   WRITINGS    AND    HIS    CHARACTER  91 

part  they  were  to  play  in  the  future.  They  were  drawn 
out  of  him  simply  by  the  exigencies  of  his  work.  In  the 
truest  sense  of  the  word  they  were  letters,  written  to  meet 
particular  occasions,  not  formal  writings,  carefully  de- 
signed and  executed  with  a  view  to  fame  or  to  futurity. 
Letters  of  the  right  kind  are,  before  everything  else, 
products  of  the  heart ;  and  it  was  the  eager  heart  of  Paul, 
yearning  for  the  weal  of  his  spiritual  children  or  alarmed 
by  the  dangers  to  which  they  were  exposed,  that  produced 
all  his  writings.  They  were  part  of  his  day's  work. 
Just  as  he  flew  over  sea  and  land  to  revisit  his  converts, 
or  sent  Timothy  or  Titus  to  carry  them  his  counsels  and 
bring  news  of  how  they  fared,  so,  when  these  means  were 
not  available,  he  would  send  a  letter  with  the  same  design. 

118.  His  Style. — This  may  seem  to  detract  from 
the  value  of  these  writings.  We  may  be  inclined  to  wish 
that,  instead  of  having  the  course  of  his  thinking  deter- 
mined by  the  exigencies  of  so  many  special  occasions  and 
his  attention  distracted  by  so  many  minute  particulars, 
he  had  been  able  to  concentrate  the  force  of  his  mind  on 
one  perfect  book  and  expound  his  views  on  the  high  sub- 
jects which  occupied  his  thoughts  in  a  systematic  form. 
It  cannot  be  maintained  that  Paul's  Epistles  are  models 
of  style.  They  were  written  far  too  hurriedly  for  this ; 
and  the  last  thing  he  thought  of  was  to  polish  his  periods. 
Often,  indeed,  his  ideas,  by  the  mere  virtue  of  their  fine- 
ness and  beauty,  run  into  forms  of  exquisite  language,  or 
there  is  in  them  such  a  sustained  throb  of  emotion  that 
they  shape  themselves  spontaneously  into  sentences  of 
noble  eloquence.  But  oftener  his  language  is  rugged 
and  formless ;  no  doubt  it  was  the  first  which  came  to 
hand  for  expressing  what  he  had  to  say.  He  begins 
sentences  and  omits  to  finish  them;  he  goes  off  into 


92  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

digressions  and  forgets  to  pick  up  the  line  of  thought  he 
has  dropped ;  he  throws  out  his  ideas  in  lumps  instead  of 
fusing  them  into  mutual  coherence. 

Nowhere  perhaps  will  there  be  found  so  exact  a 
parallel  to  the  style  of  Paul  as  in  the  Letters  and  Speeches 
of  Oliver  Cromwell.  In  the  Protector's  brain  there  lay 
the  best  and  truest  thoughts  about  England  and  her  com- 
plicated affairs  which  existed  at  the  time  in  that  island ; 
but,  when  he  tried  to  express  them  in  speech  or  letter, 
there  issued  from  his  mind  the  most  extraordinary  mixture 
of  exclamations,  questions,  arguments  soon  losing  them- 
selves in  the  sands  of  words,  unwieldy  parentheses,  and 
morsels  of  beautiful  pathos  or  subduing  eloquence.  Yet, 
as  you  read  these  amazing  utterances,  you  come  by  degrees 
to  feel  that  you  are  getting  to  see  the  very  heart  and  soul 
of  the  Puritan  Era,  and  that  you  would  rather  be  beside 
this  man  than  any  other  representative  of  the  period. 
You  see  the  events  and  ideas  of  the  time  in  the  very 
process  of  birth. 

Perhaps,  indeed,  a  certain  formlessness  is  a  natural 
accompaniment  of  the  very  highest  originality.  The 
perfect  expression  and  orderly  arrangement  of  ideas  is  a 
later  process ;  but,  when  great  thoughts  are  for  the  first 
time  coming  forth,  there  is  a  kind  of  primordial  rough- 
ness about  them,  as  if  the  earth  out  of  which  they  are 
arising  were  still  clinging  to  them :  the  polishing  of  the 
gold  comes  late  and  has  to  be  preceded  by  the  heaving  of 
the  ore  out  of  the  bowels  of  nature.  Paul  in  his  writings 
is  hurling  forth  the  original  ore  of  truth.  We  owe  to 
him  hundreds  of  ideas  which  were  never  uttered  before. 

After  the  original  man  has  got  his  idea  out,  the  most 
commonplace  scribe  may  be  able  to  express  it  for  others 
better  than  he,  though  he  could  never  have  originated  it. 
So  throughout  the  writings  of  Paul  there  are  materials 


HIS    WRITINGS    AND    HIS    CHARACTER  93 

which  others  may  combine  into  systems  of  theology 
and  ethics,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Church  to  do  so. 
But  his  Epistles  permit  us  to  see  revelation  in  the  very 
process  of  birth.  As  we  read  them  closely,  we  seem  to 
be  witnessing  the  creation  of  a  world  of  truth,  as  the 
angels  wondered  to  see  the  firmament  evolving  itself  out 
of  chaos  and  the  multitudinous  earth  spreading  itself 
forth  in  the  light.  Minute  as  are  the  details  he  has  often 
to  deal  with,  the  whole  of  his  vast  view  of  the  truth  is 
recalled  in  his  treatment  of  every  one  of  them,  as  the 
whole  sky  is  mirrored  in  a  single  drop  of  dew.  What 
could  be  a  more  impressive  proof  of  the  fecundity  of  his 
mind  than  the  fact  that,  amid  the  innumerable  distrac- 
tions of  a  second  visit  to  his  Greek  converts,  he  should 
have  written  in  half  a  year  three  such  books  as  Romans, 
Galatians  and  Second  Corinthians? 

119.  His  Inspiration. — It  was  God  by  His  Spirit 
who  communicated  this  revelation  of  truth  to  Paul.      Its 
own  greatness  and  divineness  supply  the  best  proof  that  it 
could  have  had  no  other  origin.      But  none  the  less  did 
it  break  in  upon  Paul  with  the  joy  and  pain  of  original 
thought;    it  came  to  him  through   his  experience;    it 
drenched  and  dyed  every  fiber  of  his  mind  and  heart ; 
and  the  expression  which  it  found  in  his  writings  was  in 
accordance  with  his  peculiar  genius  and  circumstances. 

120.  The  Man  Revealed  in  his  Letters. — It  would 
be  easy  to  suggest  compensations  in  the  form  of  Paul's 
writings  for  the  literary  qualities  they  lack.      But  one  of 
these  so  outweighs  all  others  that  it  is  sufficient  by  itself 
to  justify  in  this  case  the  ways  of  God.      In  no  other 
literary  form  could  we,  to  the  same  extent,  in  the  writ- 
ings have  got  the  man.     Letters  are  the  most  personal 


94  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

form  of  literature.  A  man  may  write  a  treatise  or  a 
history  or  even  a  poem  and  hide  his  personality  behind 
it  ;  but  letters  are  valueless  unless  the  writer  shows  him- 
self. Paul  is  constantly  visible  in  his  letters.  You  can 
feel  his  heart  throbbing  in  every  chapter  he  ever  wrote. 
He  has  painted  his  own  portrait  —  not  only  that  of  the 
outward  man,  but  of  his  innermost  feelings  —  as  no  one 
else  could  have  painted  it.  It  is  not  from  Luke,  admir- 
able as  is  the  picture  drawn  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
that  we  learn  what  the  true  Paul  was,  but  from  Paul 
himself.  The  truths  he  reveals  are  all  seen  embodied  in 
the  man.  As  there  are  some  preachers  who  are  greater 
than  their  sermons,  and  the  principal  gain  of  their  hearers, 
in  listening  to  them,  is  obtained  in  the  inspiring  glimpses 
they  obtain  of  a  great  and  sanctified  personality,  so  the 
best  thing  in  the  writings  of  Paul  is  Paul  himself,  or 
rather  the  grace  of  God  in  him. 


His  character  presented  a  wonderful  combina- 
tion of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual.  From  nature  he 
had  received  a  strongly  marked  individuality  ;  but  the 
change  which  Christianity  produces  was  no  less  obvious 
in  him.  In  no  saved  man's  character  is  it  possible  to 
separate  nicely  what  is  due  to  nature  from  what  is  due  to 
grace  ;  for  nature  and  grace  blend  sweetly  in  the  redeemed 
life.  In  Paul  the  union  of  the  two  was  singularly  com- 
plete; yet  it  was  always  clear  that  there  were  two  ele- 
ments in  him  of  diverse  origin  ;  and  this  is,  indeed,  the 
key  to  a  successful  estimate  of  his  character. 


Physique.  —  To  begin  with  what  was  most  sim- 
ply natural  —  his  physique  was  an  important  condition  of 
his  career.  As  want  of  ear  may  make  a  musical  career 
impossible  or  a  failure  of  eyesight  stop  the  progress  of  a 


HIS    WRITINGS   AND    HIS    CHARACTER  95 

painter,  so  the  missionary  life  is  impossible  without  a 
certain  degree  of  physical  stamina.  To  any  one  reading 
by  itself  the  catalogue  of  Paul's  sufferings  and  observing 
the  elasticity  with  which  he  rallied  from  the  severest  of 
them  and  resumed  his  labors,  it  would  naturally  occur 
that  he  must  have  been  a  person  of  Herculean  mold.  On 
the  contrary,  he  appears  to  have  been  little  of  stature, 
and  his  bodily  presence  was  weak.  This  weakness  seems 
to  have  been  sometimes  aggravated  by  disfiguring  disease ; 
and  he  felt  keenly  the  disappointment  which  he  knew  his 
bodily  presence  would  excite  among  strangers ;  for  every 
preacher  who  loves  his  work  would  like  to  preach  the 
gospel  with  all  the  graces  which  conciliate  the  favor  of 
hearers  to  an  orator.  God,  however,  used  his  very  weak- 
ness, beyond  his  hopes,  to  draw  out  the  tenderness  of  his 
converts ;  and  so,  when  he  was  weak,  then  he  was  strong, 
and  he  was  able  to  glory  even  in  his  infirmities. 

There  is  a  theory,  which  has  obtained  extensive  cur- 
rency, that  the  disease  he  suffered  from  was  violent 
ophthalmia,  causing  disagreeable  redness  of  the  eyelids. 
But  its  grounds  are  very  slender.  He  seems,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  have  had  a  remarkable  power  of  fascinating  and 
cowing  an  enemy  with  the  keenness  of  his  glance,  as  in 
the  story  of  Ely  mas  the  sorcerer,  which  reminds  us  of  the 
tradition  about  Luther,  that  his  eyes  sometimes  so  glowed 
and  sparkled  that  bystanders  could  scarcely  look  on  them. 

There  is  no  foundation  whatever  for  an  idea  of  some 
recent  biographers  of  Paul  that  his  bodily  constitution 
was  excessively  fragile  and  chronically  afflicted  with 
shattering  nervous  disease.  No  one  could  have  gone 
through  his  labors  or  suffered  the  stoning,  the  scourgings 
and  other  tortures  he  endured  without  having  an  excep- 
tionally tough  and  sound  constitution.  It  is  true  that  he 
was  sometimes  worn  out  with  illness  and  torn  down  with 


96  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

the  acts  of  violence  to  which  he  was  exposed ;  but  the 
rapidity  of  his  recovery  on  such  occasions  proves  what  a 
large  fund  of  bodily  force  he  had  to  draw  upon.  And 
who  can  doubt  that,  when  his  face  was  melted  with  tender 
love  in  beseeching  men  to  be  reconciled  to  God  or  lighted 
up  with  enthusiasm  in  the  delivery  of  his  message,  it  must 
have  possessed  a  noble  beauty  far  above  mere  regularity 
of  feature? 

123.  Enterprise. — There  was  a  good  deal  that  was 
natural  in  another  element  of  his  character  on  which 
much  depended — his  spirit  of  enterprise.  There  are 
many  men  who  like  to  grow  where  they  are  born ;  to  have 
to  change  into  new  circumstances  and  make  acquaintance 
with  new  people  is  intolerable  to  them.  But  there  are 
others  who  have  a  kind  of  vagabondism  in  the  blood ; 
they  are  the  persons  intended  by  nature  for  emigrants  and 
pioneers ;  and,  if  they  take  to  the  work  of  the  ministry, 
they  make  the  best  missionaries. 

In  modern  times  no  missionary  has  had  this  conse- 
crated spirit  of  adventure  in  the  same  degree  as  that  great 
Scotchman,  David  Livingstone.  When  he  first  went  to 
Africa,  he  found  the  missionaries  clustered  in  the  south  of 
the  continent,  just  within  the  fringe  of  heathenism ;  they 
had  their  houses  and  gardens,  their  families,  their  small 
congregations  of  natives ;  and  they  were  content.  But 
he  moved  at  once  away  beyond  the  rest  into  the  heart  of 
heathenism,  and  dreams  of  more  distant  regions  never 
ceased  to  haunt  him,  till  at  length  he  began  his  extraor- 
dinary tramps  over  thousands  of  miles  where  no  mis- 
sionary had  ever  been  before ;  and,  when  death  overtook 
him,  he  was  still  pressing  forward. 

Paul's  was  a  nature  of  the  same  stamp,  full  of  courage 
and  adventure.  The  unknown  in  the  distance,  instead  of 


HIS    WRITINGS    AND    HIS    CHARACTER   97 

dismaying,  drew  him  on.  He  could  not  bear  to  build 
on  other  men's  foundations,  but  was  constantly  hastening 
to  virgin  soil,  leaving  churches  behind  for  others  to  build 
up.  He  believed  that,  if  he  lit  the  lamp  of  the  gospel 
here  and  there  over  vast  areas,  the  light  would  spread  in 
his  absence  by  its  own  virtue.  He  liked  to  count  the 
leagues  he  had  left  behind  him,  but  his  watchword  was 
ever  Forward.  In  his  dreams  he  saw  men  beckoning  him 
to  new  countries ;  he  had  always  a  long  unfulfilled  pro- 
gram in  his  mind ;  and,  as  death  approached,  he  was  still 
thinking  of  journeys  into  the  remotest  corners  of  the 
known  world. 

124.  Influence  Over  Men. — Another  element  of  his 
character  near  akin  to  the  one  just  mentioned  was  his 
influence  over  men.  There  are  those  to  whom  it  is  pain- 
ful to  have  to  accost  a  stranger  even  on  pressing  business ; 
and  most  men  are  only  quite  at  home  in  their  own  set — 
among  men  of  the  same  class  or  profession  as  themselves. 
But  the  life  he  had  chosen  brought  Paul  into  contact  with 
men  of  every  kind,  and  he  had  constantly  to  be  introduc- 
ing to  strangers  the  business  with  which  he  was  charged. 
He  might  be  addressing  a  king  or  a  consul  the  one  hour 
and  a  roomful  of  slaves  or  common  soldiers  the  next. 
One  day  he  had  to  speak  in  the  synagogue  of  the  Jews, 
another  among  a  crowd  of  Athenian  philosophers,  an- 
other to  the  inhabitants  of  some  provincial  town  far 
from  the  seats  of  culture.  But  he  could  adapt  himself 
to  every  man  and  every  audience.  To  the  Jews  he  spoke 
as  a  rabbi  out  of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures ;  to  the 
Greeks  he  quoted  the  words  of  their  own  poets ;  and  to 
the  barbarians  he  talked  of  the  God  who  giveth  rain  from 
heaven  and  fruitful  seasons,  filling  our  hearts  with  food 
and  gladness. 


98  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

When  a  weak  or  insincere  man  attempts  to  be  all 
things  to  all  men,  he  ends  by  being  nothing  to  anybody. 
But,  living  on  this  principle,  Paul  found  entrance  for  the 
gospel  everywhere,  and  at  the  same  time  won  for  himself 
the  etteem  and  love  of  those  to  whom  he  stooped.  If  he 
was  bitterly  hated  by  enemies,  there  was  never  a  man 
more  intensely  loved  by  his  friends.  They  received  him 
as  an  angel  of  God,  or  even  as  Jesus  Christ  himself,  and 
were  ready  to  pluck  out  their  eyes  and  give  them  to  him. 
One  church  was  jealous  of  another  getting  too  much  of 
him.  When  he  was  not  able  to  pay  a  visit  at  the  time 
he  had  promised,  they  were  furious,  as  if  he  had  done 
them  a  wrong.  When  he  was  parting  from  them,  they 
wept  sore  and  fell  on  his  neck  and  kissed  him.  Numbers 
of  young  men  were  continually  about  him,  ready  to  go  on 
his  errands.  It  was  the  largeness  of  his  manhood  which 
was  the  secret  of  this  fascination ;  for  to  a  big  nature  all 
resort,  feeling  that  in  its  neighborhood  it  is  well  with 
them. 

125.  Unselfishness. — This  popularity  was  partly, 
however,  due  to  another  quality  which  shone  conspicu- 
ously in  his  character — the  spirit  of  unselfishness.  This 
is  the  rarest  quality  in  human  nature,  and  it  is  the  most 
powerful  of  all  in  its  influence  on  others,  where  it  exists 
in  purity  and  strength.  Most  men  are  so  absorbed  in 
their  own  interests  and  so  naturally  expect  others  to  be 
the  same  that,  if  they  see  any  one  who  appears  to  have  no 
interests  of  his  own  to  serve  but  is  willing  to  do  as  much 
for  the  sake  of  others  as  the  generality  do  for  themselves, 
they  are  at  first  incredulous,  suspecting  that  he  is  only 
hiding  his  designs  beneath  the  cloak  of  benevolence ;  but, 
if  he  stand  the  test  and  his  unselfishness  prove  to  be  gen- 
uine, there  is  no  limit  to  the  homage  they  are  prepared 


HIS    WRITINGS    AND    HIS    CHARACTER  99 

to  pay  him.  As  Paul  appeared  in  country  after  country 
and  city  after  city,  he  was  at  first  a  complete  enigma  to 
those  whom  he  approached.  They  formed  all  sorts  of 
conjectures  as  to  his  real  design.  Was  it  money  he  was 
seeking,  or  power,  or  something  darker  and  less  pure? 
His  enemies  never  ceased  to  throw  out  such  insinuations. 
But  those  who  got  near  him  and  saw  the  man  as  he  was, 
who  knew  that  he  refused  money  and  worked  with  his 
hands  day  and  night  to  keep  himself  above  the  suspicion 
of  mercenary  motives,  who  heard  him  pleading  with  them 
one  by  one  in  their  homes  and  exhorting  them  with  tears 
to  a  holy  life,  who  saw  the  sustained  personal  interest  he 
took  in  every  one  of  them — these  could  not  resist  the 
proofs  of  his  disinterestedness  or  deny  him  their  affection. 
There  never  was  a  man  more  unselfish ;  he  had  liter- 
ally no  interest  of  his  own  to  live  for.  Without  family 
ties,  he  poured  all  the  affections  of  his  big  nature,  which 
might  have  been  given  to  wife  and  children,  into  the 
channels  of  his  work.  He  compares  his  tenderness  toward 
his  converts  to  that  of  a  nursing- mother  to  her  children ; 
he  pleads  with  them  to  remember  that  he  is  their  father 
who  has  begotten  them  in  the  gospel.  They  are  his  glory 
and  crown,  his  hope  and  joy  and  crown  of  rejoicing. 
Eager  as  he  was  for  new  conquests,  he  never  lost  his  hold 
upon  those  he  had  won.  He  could  assure  his  churches 
that  he  prayed  and  gave  thanks  for  them  night  and  day, 
and  he  remembered  his  converts  by  name  at  the  throne  of 
grace.  How  could  human  nature  resist  disinterestedness 
like  this?  If  Paul  was  a  conqueror  of  the  world,  he 
conquered  it  by  the  power  of  love. 

126.  His  Mission. — The  two  most  distinctively 
Christian  features  of  his  character  have  still  to  be  men- 
tioned. One  of  these  was  the  sense  of  having  a  divine 


100  THE    LIFE    uF    ST.    PAUL 

mission  to  preach  Christ,  which  he  was  bound  to  fulfill 
Most  men  merely  drift  through  life,  and  the  work  they 
do  is  determined  by  a  hundred  indifferent  circumstances ; 
they  might  as  well  be  doing  anything  else,  or  they  would 
prefer,  if  they  could  afford  it,  to  be  doing  nothing  at  all. 
But,  from  the  time  when  he  became  a  Christian,  Paul 
knew  that  he  had  a  definite  work  to  do ;  and  the  call  he 
had  received  to  it  never  ceased  to  ring  like  a  tocsin  in  his 
soul.  "Woe  is  unto  me  if  I  preach  not  the  gospel;" 
this  was  the  impulse  which  drove  him  on.  He  felt  that 
he  had  a  world  of  new  truths  to  utter  and  that  the  salva- 
tion of  mankind  depended  on  their  utterance.  He  knew 
himself  called  to  make  Christ  known  to  as  many  of  his 
fellow-creatures  as  his  utmost  exertions  could  enable  him 
to  reach.  It  was  this  which  made  him  so  impetuous  in 
his  movements,  so  blind  to  danger,  so  contemptuous  of 
suffering.  "None  of  these  things  move  me,  neither  count 
I  my  life  dear  unto  myself,  so  that  I  might  finish  my 
course  with  joy,  and  the  ministry  which  I  have  received 
of  the  Lord  Jesus,  to  testify  the  gospel  of  the  grace  of 
God."  He  lived  with  the  account  which  he  would  have 
to  give  at  the  judgment-seat  of  Christ  ever  in  his  eye, 
and  his  heart  was  revived  in  every  hour  of  discourage- 
ment by  the  vision  of  the  crown  of  life  which,  if  he 
proved  faithful,  the  Lord,  the  righteous  Judge,  would 
place  upon  his  head. 

127.  Devotion  to  Christ. — The  other  peculiarly 
Christian  quality  which  shaped  his  career  was  personal 
devotion  to  Christ.  This  was  the  supreme  characteristic 
of  the  man,  and  from  first  to  last  the  mainspring  of  his 
activities.  From  the  moment  of  his  first  meeting  with 
Christ  he  had  but  one  passion ;  his  love  to  his  Saviour 
burned  with  more  and  more  brightness  to  the  end.  He 


HIS    WRITINGS    AND    HIS    CHARACTER   101 

delighted  to  call  himself  the  slave  of  Christ,  and  had  no 
ambition  except  to  be  the  propagator  of  His  ideas  and 
the  continuer  of  His  influence. 

He  took  up  this  idea  of  being  Christ's  representative 
with  startling  boldness.  He  says  the  heart  of  Christ  is 
beating  in  his  bosom  toward  his  converts;  he  says  the 
mind  of  Christ  is  thinking  in  his  brain ;  he  says  that  he 
is  continuing  the  work  of  Christ  and  filling  up  that  which 
was  lacking  in  His  sufferings;  he  says  the  wounds  of 
Christ  are  reproduced  in  the  scars  upon  his  body ;  he  says 
he  is  dying  that  others  may  live,  as  Christ  died  for  the 
life  of  the  world.  But  it  was  in  reality  the  deepest 
humility  which  lay  beneath  these  bold  expressions.  He 
had  the  sense  that  Christ  had  done  everything  for  him ; 
He  had  entered  into  him,  casting  out  the  old  Paul  and 
ending  the  old  life,  and  had  begotten  a  new  man,  with 
new  designs,  feelings  and  activities.  And  it  was  his 
deepest  longing  that  this  process  should  go  on  and  be- 
come complete — that  his  old  self  should  vanish  quite 
away,  and  that  the  new  self,  which  Christ  had  created  in 
His  own  image  and  still  sustained,  should  become  so  pre- 
dominant that,  when  the  thoughts  of  his  mind  were 
Christ's  thoughts,  the  words  on  his  lips  Christ's  words, 
the  deeds  he  did  Christ's  deeds,  and  the  character  he  wore 
Christ's  character,  he  might  be  able  to  say,  "I  live,  yet 
not  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me." 


CHAPTER   VIII 
PICTURE  OF  A  PAULINE  CHURCH 


Paragraphs  128-144. 

128,  129.    THE   EXTERIOR  AND   THE    INTERIOR 

VIEW    OP  HISTORY. 
130-143,    A  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH  IN  A  HEATHEN 

CITY,     131.  The  Place  of  Meeting.    132,  133.  The 

Persons  Present.    134-137.  The  Services.    138-143. 

Abuses  and   Irregularities.     139,  140.  Of  Domestic 

lafe.     141-143.    Inside  the  Church. 
144.    INFERENCES. 

128.  History  Without  and  Within.— A  holiday 
visitor  to  a  foreign  city  walks  through  the  streets,  guide- 
book in  hand,  looking  at  monuments,  churches,  public 
buildings  and  the  outsides  of  the  houses,  and  in  this  way 
is  supposed  to  be  made  acquainted  with  the  town ;  but, 
on  reflection,  he  will  find  that  he  has  scarcely  learned 
anything  about  it,  because  he  has  not  been  inside  the 
houses.  He  does  not  know  how  the  people  live — not 
even  what  kind  of  furniture  they  have  or  what  kind  of 
food  they  eat — not  to  speak  of  far  deeper  matters,  such 
as  how  they  love,  what  they  admire  and  pursue,  and 
whether  they  are  content  with  their  lot. 

In  reading  history  one  is  often  at  a  loss  in  the  same 
way.  It  is  only  the  outside  of  life  that  is  made  visible. 
It  is  as  if  the  eye  were  carried  along  the  external  surface 
of  a  tree,  instead  of  seeing  a  cross-section  of  its  substance. 
The  pomp  and  glitter  of  the  court,  the  wars  waged  and 

102 


PICTURE    OF    A    PAULINE    CHURCH     108 

the  victories  won,  the  changes  in  the  constitution  and  the 
rise  and  fall  of  administrations,  are  faithfully  recorded ; 
but  the  reader  feels  that  he  would  learn  far  more  of  the 
real  history  of  the  time  if  he  could  see  for  one  hour  what 
was  happening  beneath  the  roofs  of  the  peasant,  the 
shopkeeper,  the  clergyman  and  the  noble. 

Even  in  Scripture-history  there  is  the  same  difficulty. 
In  the  narrative  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  we  receive 
thrilling  accounts  of  the  external  details  of  Paul's  his- 
tory ;  we  are  carried  rapidly  from  city  to  city  and  in- 
formed of  the  incidents  which  accompanied  the  founding 
of  the  various  churches;  but  we  cannot  help  wishing 
sometimes  to  stop  and  learn  what  one  of  these  churches 
was  like  inside.  In  Paphos  or  Iconium,  in  Thessalonica 
or  Beroea  or  Corinth,  how  did  things  go  on  after  Paul 
left?  What  were  the  Christians  like,  and  what  was  the 
aspect  of  their  worship? 

129.  Happily  it  is  possible  to  obtain  this  interior 
view  of  things.  As  Luke's  narrative  describes  the  outside 
of  Paul's  career,  so  Paul's  own  Epistles  permit  us  to  see 
its  deeper  aspects.  They  rewrite  the  history  on  a  differ- 
ent plane.  This  is  especially  the  case  with  those  Epistles 
written  at  the  close  of  his  third  journey,  which  cast  a 
flood  of  light  back  upon  the  period  covered  by  all  his 
journeys.  In  addition  to  the  three  Epistles  already  men- 
tioned as  having  been  written  at  this  time,  there  is 
another  belonging  to  the  same  part  of  his  life — the  First 
to  the  Corinthians — which  may  be  said  to  transport  us, 
as  on  a  magician's  mantle,  back  over  two  thousand  years 
and,  stationing  us  in  mid-air  above  a  great  Greek  city, 
in  which  there  was  a  Christian  church,  to  take  the  roof 
off  the  meeting-house  of  the  Christians  and  permit  us  to 
see  what  was  going  on  within. 


104  THE   LIFE   OF   ST.    PAUL 

130.  A  Christian  Gathering  in  Corinth.— It  is  a 
strange  spectacle  we  witness  from  this  coigne  of  vantage. 
It  is  Sabbath  evening,   but  of  course  the  heathen  city 
knows  of  no  Sabbath.     The  day's  work  at  the  busy  sea- 
port is  over,  and  the  streets  are  thronged  with  gay  revelers 
intent  on  a  night  of  pleasure,  for  it  is  the  wickedest  city 
of  that  wicked  ancient  world.      Hundreds  of  merchants 
and  sailors  from  foreign  parts  are  lounging  about.     The 
gay  young  Roman,  who  has  come  across  to  this  Paris  for 
a  bout  of  dissipation,  drives  his  light  chariot  through  the 
streets.      If  it  is  near  the  time  of  the  annual  games,  there 
are  groups  of  boxers,  runners,  charioteers  and  wrestlers, 
surrounded  by  their  admirers  and  discussing  their  chances 
of  winning  the  coveted  crowns.     In  the  warm   genial 
climate  old  and  young  are  out  of  doors  enjoying  the 
evening  hour,  while  the  sun,  going  down  over  the  Adriatic, 
is  casting  its  golden  light  upon  the  palaces  and  temples 
of  the  wealthy  city. 

131.  Meanwhile  the  little  company  of  Christians  has 
been  gathering  from  all  directions  to  their  place  of  wor- 
ship ;    for  it  is  the  hour  of  their  stated  assembly.     The 
place  of  meeting  itself  does  not  rise  very  clearly  before 
our  view.     But  at  all  events  it  is  no  gorgeous  temple  like 
those  by  which  it  is  surrounded ;  it  has  not  even  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  neighboring  synagogue.      It  may  be  a 
large  room  in  a  private  house  or  the  wareroom  of  some 
Christian  merchant  cleared  for  the  occasion. 

132.  Glance  round  the  benches  and  look  at  the  faces. 
You  at  once  discern  one  marked  distinction  among  them : 
some  have  the  peculiar  facial  contour  of  the  Jew,  while 
the  rest  are  Gentiles  of  various  nationalities ;    and  the 
latter  are  the  majority.      But  look  closer  still  and  you 
notice  another  distinction:    some  wear  the  ring  which 


PICTURE    OF   A    PAULINE    CHURCH     105 

denotes  that  they  are  free,  while  others  are  slaves ;  and 
the  latter  preponderate.  Here  and  there  among  the 
Gentile  members  there  is  one  with  the  regular  features  of 
the  born  Greek,  perhaps  shaded  with  the  pale  thought- 
fulness  of  the  philosopher  or  distinguished  with  the  self- 
confidence  of  wealth;  but  not  many  great,  not  many 
mighty,  not  many  noble  are  there ;  the  majority  belong  to 
what  in  this  pretentious  city  would  be  reckoned  the  fool- 
ish, the  weak,  the  base  and  despised  things  of  this  world ; 
they  are  slaves,  whose  ancestors  did  not  breathe  the  pel- 
lucid air  of  Greece  but  roamed  in  savage  hordes  on  the 
banks  of  the  Danube  or  the  Don. 

133.  But  observe  one  thing  besides  on  all  the  faces 
present — the  terrible  traces  of  their  past  life.  In  a 
modern  Christian  congregation  one  sees  in  the  faces  on 
every  hand  that  peculiar  cast  of  feature  which  Christian 
nurture,  inherited  through  many  centuries,  has  produced , 
and  it  is  only  here  and  there  that  a  face  may  be  seen  in 
the  lines  of  which  is  written  the  tale  of  debauchery  or 
crime.  But  in  this  Corinthian  congregation  these  awful 
hieroglyphics  are  everywhere.  "Know  ye  not,"  Paul 
writes  to  them,  "that  the  unrighteous  shall  not  inherit 
the  kingdom  of  God?  Be  not  deceived:  neither  form  - 
cators,  nor  idolaters,  nor  adulterers,  nor  effeminate,  nor 
abusers  of  themselves  with  mankind,  nor  thieves,  nor 
covetous,  nor  extortioners  shall  inherit  the  kingdom  of 
God.  And  such  were  some  of  you."  Look  at  that  tall, 
sallow-faced  Greek :  he  has  wallowed  in  the  mire  of  Circe's 
swine-pens.  Look  at  that  low-browed  Scythian  slave :  he 
has  been  a  pickpocket  and  a  jail-bird.  Look  at  that 
thin-nosed,  sharp-eyed  Jew :  he  has  been  a  Shylock,  cut- 
ting his  pound  of  flesh  from  the  gilded  youth  of  Corinth. 

Yet  there  has  been  a  gr^at  change.     Another  story 


106  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

besides  the  tale  of  sin  is  written  on  these  countenances. 
"But  ye  are  washed,  but  ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are 
justified  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  and  by  the  Spirit 
of  our  God. ' '  Listen,  they  are  singing ;  it  is  the  fortieth 
Psalm :  '  *  He  took  me  from  the  fearful  pit  and  from  the 
miry  clay. ' '  What  pathos  they  throw  into  the  words, 
what  joy  overspreads  their  faces !  They  know  themselves 
to  be  monuments  of  free  grace  and  dying  love. 

134.  The    Services. — But    suppose  them  now   all 
gathered;    how  does  their  worship  proceed?     There  was 
tiiis  difference  between  their  services  and  most  of  ours, 
that  instead  of  one  man  conducting  them — offering  their 
prayers,  preaching,  and  giving  out  the  psalms — all  the 
men  present  were  at  liberty  to  contribute   their  part. 
There  may  have  been   a  leader  or  chairman ;    but  one 
member  might  read  a  portion  of  Scripture,  another  offer 
prayer,  a  third  deliver  an  address,  a  fourth  raise  a  hymn, 
and  so  on.     Nor  does  there  seem  to  have  been  any  fixed 
order  in  which  the  different  parts  of  the  service  occurred ; 
any  member  might  rise  and  lead  away  the  company  into 
praise  or  prayer  or  meditation,  as  he  felt  prompted. 

135.  This  peculiarity  was  due  to  another  great  differ- 
ence between  them  and  us.     The  members  were  endowed 
with  very  extraordinary  gifts.      Some  of  them  had  the 
power  of  working  miracles,  such  as  the  healing  of  the 
sick.      Others  possessed  a  strange  gift  called  the  gift  of 
tongues.      It  is  not  quite  clear  what  it  was ;  but  it  seems 
to  have  been  a  kind  of  tranced  utterance,  in  which  the 
speaker  poured  out  an  impassioned  rhapsody  by  which 
his  religious  feeling  received  both  expression  and  exalta- 
tion.    Some  of  those  who  possessed  this  gift  were  not 
able  to  tell  others  the  meaning  of  what  they  were  saying1; 


PICTURE    OF    A   PAULINE    CHURCH     107 

while  others  had  this  additional  power ;  and  there  were 
those  who,  though  not  speaking  with  tongues  themselves, 
were  able  to  interpret  what  the  inspired  speakers  were 
saying.  Then  again,  there  were  members  who  possessed 
the  gift  of  prophecy — a  very  valuable  endowment.  It 
was  not  the  power  of  predicting  future  events,  but  a  gift 
of  impassioned  eloquence,  the  effects  of  which  were  some- 
times marvelous :  when  an  unbeliever  entered  the  assem- 
bly and  listened  to  the  prophets,  he  was  seized  with  un- 
controllable emotion,  the  sins  of  his  past  life  rose  up 
before  him,  and,  falling  on  his  face,  he  confessed  that 
God  was  among  them  of  a  truth.  Other  members  exer- 
cised gifts  more  like  those  we  are  ourselves  acquainted 
with,  such  as  the  gift  of  teaching  or  the  gift  of  manage- 
ment. But  in  all  cases  there  appears  to  have  been  a  kind 
of  immediate  inspiration,  so  that  what  they  did  was  not 
the  effect  of  calculation  or  preparation,  but  of  a  strong 
present  impulse. 

136.  These  phenomena  are  so  remarkable  that,  if 
narrated  in  a  history,  they  would  put  a  severe  strain  on 
belief.  But  the  evidence  for  them  is  incontrovertible ; 
for  no  man,  writing  to  people  about  their  own  condition, 
invents  a  mythical  description  of  their  circumstances; 
and  besides,  Paul  was  writing  to  restrain  rather  than 
encourage  these  manifestations.  They  show  with  what 
mighty  force,  at  its  first  entrance  into  the  world,  Chris- 
tianity took  possession  of  the  spirits  which  it  touched. 
Each  believer  received,  generally  at  his  baptism,  when 
the  hands  of  the  baptizer  were  laid  on  him,  his  special 
gift,  which,  if  he  remained  faithful  to  it,  he  continued  to 
exercise.  It  was  the  Holy  Spirit,  poured  forth  without 
stint,  that  entered  into  the  spirits  of  men  and  distributed 
these  gifts  among  tnem  severally  as  He  willed ;  and  each 


108  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

member  had  to  make  use  of  his  gift  for  the  benefit  of  the 
whole  body. 

137.  After  the  services  just  described  were  over,  the 
members  sat  down  together  to  a  love-feast,  which  was 
wound  up  with  the  breaking  of  bread  in  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per ;  and  then,  after  a  fraternal  kiss,  they  parted  to  their 
homes.  It  was  a  memorable  scene,  radiant  with  brotherly 
love  and  alive  with  outbreaking  spiritual  power.  As  the 
Christians  wended  their  way  homeward  through  the  care- 
less groups  of  the  heathen  city,  they  were  conscious  of 
having  experienced  that  which  eye  had  not  seen  nor  ear 
heard. 

188.  Abuses  and  Irregularities. — But  truth  de- 
mands that  the  dark  side  of  the  picture  be  shown  as  well 
as  the  bright  one.  There  were  abuses  and  irregularities 
in  the  Church  which  it  is  exceedingly  painful  to  recall. 
These  were  due  to  two  things — the  antecedents  of  the 
members  and  the  mixture  in  the  Church  of  Jewish  and 
Gentile  elements.  If  it  be  remembered  how  vast  was  the 
change  which  most  of  the  members  had  made  in  passing 
from  the  worship  of  the  heathen  temples  to  the  pure  and 
simple  worship  of  Christianity,  it  will  not  excite  surprise 
that  their  old  life  still  clung  to  them  or  that  they  did  not 
clearly  distinguish  which  things  needed  to  be  changed 
and  which  might  continue  as  they  had  been. 

139.  Yet  it  startles  us  to  learn  that  some  of  them 
were  living  in  gross  sensuality,  and  that  the  more  philos- 
ophical defended  this  on  principle.  One  member,  ap- 
parently a  person  of  wealth  and  position,  was  openly 
living  in  a  connection  which  would  have  been  a  scandal 
eren  among  heathens,  and,  though  Paul  had  indignantly 
written  to  have  him  excommunicated,  the  Church  had 


PICTURE    OF    A    PAULINE    CHURCH     109 

failed  to  obey,  affecting  to  misunderstand  the  order. 
Others  had  been  allured  back  to  take  part  in  the  feasts 
in  the  idol  temples,  notwithstanding  their  accompani- 
ments of  drunkenness  and  revelry.  They  excused  them- 
selves with  the  plea  that  they  no  longer  ate  the  feast  in 
honor  of  the  gods,  but  only  as  an  ordinary  meal,  and 
argued  that  they  would  have  to  go  out  of  the  world  if 
they  were  not  sometimes  to  associate  with  sinners. 

140.  It  is  evident  that  these  abuses  belonged  to  the 
Gentile  section  of  the  Church.      In  the  Jewish  section,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  were  strange  doubts  and  scruples 
about  the  same  subjects.      Some,  for  instance,  revolted 
with  the  loose  behavior  of  their  Gentile  brethren,  had 
gone  to  the  opposite  extreme,  denouncing  marriage  alto- 
gether and  raising  anxious  questions  as  to  whether  widows 
might  marry  again,  whether  a  Christian   married  to  a 
heathen  wife  ought  to  put  her  away,  and  other  points  of 
the  same  nature.      While  some  of  the  Gentile  converts 
were  participating  in  the  idol  feasts,  some  of  the  Jewish 
ones  had  scruples  about  buying  in  the  market  the  meat 
which  had  been  offered  in  sacrifice  to  idols,  and  looked 
with  censure  on  their  brethren  who  allowed  themselves 
this  freedom. 

141.  These  difficulties  belonged  to  the  domestic  life 
of  the  Christians;    but,  in  their  public  meetings  also, 
there  were  grave  irregularities.     The  very  gifts  of  the 
Spirit  were  perverted  into  instruments  of  sin ;    for  those 
possessed  of  the  more  showy  gifts,  such  as  miracles  and 
tongues,  were  too  fond  of  displaying  them,  and  turned 
them  into  grounds  of  boasting.     This  led  to  confusion 
and  even  uproar ;    for  sometimes  two  or  three  of  those 
who  spoke  with  tongues  would  be  pouring  forth  their 
unintelligible  utterances  at  once,  so  that,  as  Paul  said,  if 


110  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

any  stranger  had  entered  their  meeting,  he  would  have 
concluded  that  they  were  all  mad.  The  prophets  spoke 
at  wearisome  length,  and  too  many  pressed  forward  to 
take  part  in  the  services.  Paul  had  sternly  to  rebuke 
these  extravagances,  insisting  on  the  principle  that  the 
spirits  of  the  prophets  were  subject  to  the  prophets,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  spiritual  impulse  was  no  apology  for 
disorder. 

142.  But  there  were  still  worse  things  inside  the 
Church.      Even  the  sacredness  of  the  Lord's  Supper  was 
profaned.      It  seems  that  the  members  were  in  the  habit 
of  taking  with  them  to  church  the  bread  and  wine  which 
were  needed  for  this  sacrament ;  but  the  wealthy  brought 
abundant  and  choice  supplies  and,  instead  of  waiting  for 
their  poorer  brethren  and  sharing  their  provisions  with 
them,  began  to  eat  and  drink  so  gluttonously  that  the 
table  of  the  Lord  actually  resounded  with  drunkenness 
and  riot. 

143.  One  more  dark  touch  must  be  added  to  this  sad 
picture.      In  spite  of  the  brotherly  kiss  with  which  their 
meetings  closed,  they  had  fallen  into  mutual  rivalry  and 
contention.      No  doubt  this  was  due  to  the  heterogeneous 
elements  brought  together  in  the  Church ;  but  it  had  been 
allowed  to  go  to  great  lengths.     Brother  went  to  law  with 
brother  in  the  heathen  courts  instead  of  seeking  the  arbi- 
tration of  a  Christian  friend.     The  body  of  the  members 
was  split  up  into  four  theological  factions.      Some  called 
themselves  after  Paul  himself.     These  treated  the  scruples 
of  the  weaker  brethren  about  meats  and  other  things  with 
scorn.       Others    took   the   name   of   Apollonians   from 
Apollos,    an   eloquent    teacher   from    Alexandria,    who 
visited  Corinth  between  Paul's  second  and  third  journeys. 
These  were  the   philosophical  party;    they  denied  the 


PICTURE    OF   A   PAULINE    CHURCH     111 

doctrine  of  the  resurrection,  because  it  was  absurd  to 
suppose  that  the  scattered  atoms  of  the  dead  body  could 
ever  be  united  again.  The  third  party  took  the  name 
of  Peter,  or  Cephas,  as  in  their  Hebrew  purism  they  pre- 
ferred to  call  him.  These  were  narrow-minded  Jews, 
who  objected  to  the  liberality  of  Paul's  views.  The 
fourth  party  affected  to  be  above  all  parties  and  called 
themselves  simply  Christians.  Like  many  despisers  of 
the  sects  since  then,  who  have  used  the  name  of  Christian 
in  the  same  way,  these  were  the  most  bitterly  sectarian  of 
all  and  rejected  Paul's  authority  with  malicious  scorn. 

144.  Inferences. — Such  is  the  checkered  picture  of 
one  of  Paul's  churches  given  in  one  of  his  own  Epistles; 
and  it  shows  several  things  with  much  impressiveness.  It 
shows,  for  instance,  how  exceptional,  even  in  that  age,  his 
own  mind  and  character  were,  and  what  a  blessing  his 
gifts  and  graces  of  good  sense,  of  large  sympathy  blended 
with  conscientious  firmness,  of  personal  purity  and  honor, 
were  to  the  infant  Church.  It  shows  that  it  is  not  behind 
but  in  front  that  we  have  to  look  for  the  golden  age  of 
Christianity.  It  shows  how  perilous  it  is  to  assume  that 
the  prevalence  of  any  ecclesiastical  usage  at  that  time 
must  constitute  a  rule  for  all  times.  Everything  of  this 
kind  was  evidently  at  the  experimental  stage.  Indeed, 
in  the  latest  writings  of  Paul  we  find  the  picture  of  a  very 
different  state  of  things,  in  which  the  worship  and  disci- 
pline of  the  Church  were  far  more  fixed  and  orderly.  It 
is  not  for  a  pattern  of  the  machinery  of  a  church  we 
ought  to  go  back  to  this  early  time,  but  for  a  spectacle 
of  fresh  and  transforming  spiritual  power.  This  is  what 
will  always  attract  to  the  Apostolic  Age  the  longing  eyes 
of  Christians ;  the  power  of  the  Spirit  was  energizing  in 
every  member,  the  tides  of  fresh  emotion  swelled  in  every 


112  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

breast,  and  all  felt  that  the  dayspring  of  a  new  revelation 
had  visited  them ;  life,  love,  light  were  diffusing  them- 
selves everywhere.  Even  the  vices  of  the  young  Church 
were  the  irregularities  of  abundant  life,  for  the  lack  of 
which  the  lifeless  order  of  many  a  subsequent  generation 
has  been  a  poor  compensation. 


CHAPTER  IX 
HIS  GREAT  CONTROVERSY 


Paragraphs  145-162. 

146-148.    THE    dTTESTION   AT   ISSUE. 

149-153.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  IT.  149,  150.  By 
Peter;  151.  By  Paul;  152,  153.  By  the  Council  of 
Jerusalem.  154-156.  Attempt  to  unsettle  it.  157, 
158.  Paul  crushes  the  Judaizers.  159-162.  A  subor- 
dinate Branch  of  the  Question:  the  Relation  of  Chris- 
tian Jews  to  the  Law. 

145.  The  version  of  the  apostle's  life  supplied  in  his 
own  letters  is  largely  occupied  with  a  controversy  which 
cost  him  much  pain  and  took  up  much  of  his  time  for 
many  years,  but  of  which  Luke  says  little.      At  the  date 
when  Luke  wrote,  it  was  a  dead  controversy,  and  it  be- 
longed to  a  different  plane  from  that  along  which  his 
story  moves.   But  at  the  time  when  it  was  raging,  it  tried 
Paul  far  more  than  tiresome  journeys  or  angry  seas.      It 
was  at  its  hottest  about  the  close  of  his  third  journey,  and 
the  Epistles   already  mentioned   as  having  been  written 
then  may  be  said  to  have  been  evoked  by  it.     The  Epistle 
to   the   Galatians  especially  was  a   thunderbolt   hurled 
against  his  opponents  in  this  controversy ;  and  its  burn- 
ing sentences  show  how  profoundly  he  was  moved  by  the 
subject, 

146.  The  Question  at  Issue. — The  question  at  issue 
was  whether  the  Gentiles  were  required  to  become  Jews 

112 


114  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

before  they  could  be  true  Christians ;  or,  in  other  words, 
whether  they  had  to  be  circumcised  in  order  to  be  saved. 

147.  It  had  pleased  God  in  the  primitive  times  to 
choose  the  Jewish  race  from  among  the  nations  and  make 
it  the  repository  of  salvation;  and,  till  the  advent  of 
Christ,  those  from  other  nations  who  wished  to  become 
partakers  of  the  true  religion  had  to  seek  entrance  as 
proselytes  within  the  sacred  enclosure  of  Israel.  Having 
thus  destined  this  race  to  be  the  guardians  of  revelation, 
God  had  to  separate  them  very  completely  from  all  other 
nations  and  from  all  other  aims  which  might  have  dis- 
tracted their  attention  from  the  sacred  trust  which  had 
been  committed  to  them.  For  this  purpose  he  regulated 
their  whole  life  with  rules  and  arrangements  intended  to 
make  them  a  peculiar  people,  different  from  all  other 
races  of  the  earth.  Every  detail  of  their  life — their 
forms  of  worship,  their  social  customs,  their  dress,  their 
food — was  prescribed  for  them ;  and  all  these  prescrip- 
tions were  embodied  in  that  vast  legal  instrument  which 
they  called  the  Law.  The  rigorous  prescription  of  so 
many  things  which  are  naturally  left  to  free  choice  was  a 
heavy  yoke  upon  the  chosen  people ;  it  was  a  severe  dis- 
cipline to  the  conscience,  and  such  it  was  felt  to  be  by 
the  more  earnest  spirits  of  the  nation. 

But  others  saw  in  it  a  badge  of  pride ;  it  made  them 
feel  that  they  were  the  select  of  the  earth  and  superior  to 
all  other  people;  and,  instead  of  groaning  under  the 
yoke,  as  they  would  have  done  if  their  consciences  had 
been  very  tender,  they  multiplied  the  distinctions  of  the 
Jew,  swelling  the  volume  of  the  prescriptions  of  the  law 
with  stereotyped  customs  of  their  own.  To  be  a  Jew 
appeared  to  them  the  mark  of  belonging  to  the  aristocracy 
of  the  nations ;  to  be  admitted  to  the  privileges  of  this 


HIS    GREAT    CONTROVERSY  115 

position  was  in  their  eyes  the  greatest  honor  which  could 
be  conferred  on  one  who  did  not  belong  to  the  common- 
wealth of  Israel.  Their  thoughts  were  all  pent  within 
the  circle  of  this  national  conceit.  Even  their  hopes 
about  the  Messiah  were  colored  with  these  prejudices; 
they  expected  Him  to  be  the  hero  of  their  own  nation, 
and  the  extension  of  His  kingdom  they  conceived  as  a 
crowding  of  the  other  nations  within  the  circle  of  their 
own  through  the  gateway  of  circumcision.  They  expected 
that  all  the  converts  of  the  Messiah  would  undergo  this 
national  rite  and  adopt  the  life  prescribed  in  the  Jewish 
law  and  tradition ;  in  short,  their  conception  of  Messiah's 
reign  was  a  world  of  Jews. 

148.  Such  undoubtedly  was   the   tenor  of   popular 
sentiment  in  Palestine  when  Christ  came ;  and  multitudes 
of  those  who  accepted  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  and  entered 
the  Christian  Church  had  this  set  of  conceptions  as  their 
intellectual  horizon.     They  had  become  Christians,  but 
they  had  not  ceased  to  be  Jews ;    they  still  attended  the 
temple  worship ;    they  prayed  at  the  stated  hours,  they 
fasted  on  the  stated  days,  they  dressed  in  the  style  of  the 
Jewish  ritual ;  they  would  have  thought  themselves  defiled 
by  eating  with  uncircumcised  Gentiles ;  and  they  had  no 
thought  but  that,   if  Gentiles  became   Christians,  they 
irould  be  circumcised  and  adopt  the  style  and  customs  of 
die  Jewish  nation. 

149.  The  Settlement. — The  question  was  settled  by 
the  direct  intervention  of  God  in  the  case  of  Cornelius, 
the  centurion   of   Caesarea.      When    the   messengers   of 
Cornelius  were  on   their  way  to  the   Apostle   Peter  at 
Joppa,  God  showed  that  leader  among  the  apostles,  by 
the  vision  of  the  sheet  full  of  clean  and  unclean  beasts, 
that  the  Christian  Church  was  to  contain  circumcised  and 


116  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

uncircumcised  alike.  In  obedience  to  this  heavenly  sign 
Peter  accompanied  the  centurion's  messengers  to  Csesarea 
and  saw  such  evidences  that  the  household  of  Cornelius  had 
already,  without  circumcision,  received  the  distinctively 
Christian  endowments  of  faith  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  that 
he  could  not  hesitate  to  baptize  them  as  being  Christians 
already.  When  he  returned  to  Jerusalem,  his  proceed- 
ings created  wonder  and  indignation  among  the  Christians 
of  the  strictly  Jewish  persuasion ;  but  he  defended  himself 
by  recounting  the  vision  of  the  sheet  and  by  an  appeal 
to  the  clear  fact  that  these  uncircumcised  Gentiles  were 
proved  by  their  possession  of  faith  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
to  have  been  already  Christians. 

150.  This  incident  ought  to  have  settled  the  question 
once  for  all ;    but  the  pride  of  race  and  the  prejudices  of 
a  lifetime  are  not  easily  subdued.      Although  the  Chris- 
tians of  Jerusalem  reconciled  themselves  to  Peter's  con- 
duct in  this  single  case,  they  neglected  to  extract  from 
it  the  universal  principle  which  it  implied;    and  even 
Peter  himself,  as  we  shall  subsequently  see,  did  not  fully 
comprehend  what  was  involved  in  his  own  conduct. 

151.  Meanwhile,   however,   the   question   had    been 
settled  in  a  far  stronger  and  more  logical  mind  than 
Peter's.      Paul  at  this  time  began  his  apostolic  work  at 
Antioch,  and  soon  afterward  went  forth  with  Barnabas 
upon  his  first  great  missionary  expedition  into  the  Gen- 
tile world ;  and,  wherever  they  went,  he  admitted  heathens 
into  the  Christian  Church  without  circumcision. 

Paul  in  thus  acting  did  not  copy  Peter.  He  had 
received  his  gospel  directly  from  heaven.  In  the  soli- 
tudes of  Arabia,  in  the  years  immediately  after  his  con- 
version, he  had  thought  this  subject  out  and  come  to  far 
more  radical  conclusions  about  it  than  had  yet  entered 


HIS    GREAT    CONTROVERSY  117 

the  minds  of  any  of  the  rest  of  the  apostles.  To  him  far 
more  than  to  any  of  them  the  law  had  been  a  yoke  of 
bondage ;  he  saw  that  it  was  only  a  stern  preparation  for 
Christianity,  not  a  part  of  it;  indeed,  there  was  in  his 
mind  a  deep  gulf  of  contrast  between  the  misery  and 
curse  of  the  one  state  and  the  joy  and  freedom  of  the 
other.  To  his  mind  to  impose  the  yoke  of  the  law  on 
the  Gentiles  would  have  been  to  destroy  the  very  genius 
of  Christianity ;  it  would  have  been  the  imposition  of 
conditions  of  salvation  totally  different  from  that  which 
he  knew  to  be  the  one  condition  of  it  in  the  gospel. 

These  were  the  deep  reasons  which  settled  this  ques- 
tion in  this  great  mind.  Besides,  as  a  man  who  knew 
the  world  and  whose  heart  was  set  on  winning  the  Gentile 
nations  to  Christ,  he  felt  far  more  strongly  than  did  the 
Jews  of  Jerusalem,  with  their  provincial  horizon,  how 
fatal  such  conditions  as  they  meant  to  impose  would  be 
to  the  success  of  Christianity  outside  Judaea.  The  proud 
Romans,  the  highminded  Greeks,  would  never  have  con- 
sented to  be  circumcised  and  to  cramp  their  life  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  Jewish  tradition ;  a  religion  ham- 
pered with  such  conditions  could  never  have  become  the 
universal  religion. 

152.  But,  when  Paul  and  Barnabas  came  back  from 
their  first  missionary  tour  to  Antioch,  they  found  that  a 
still  more  decisive  settlement  of  this  question  was  re- 
quired ;  for  Christians  of  the  strictly  Jewish  sort  were  com- 
ing down  from  Jerusalem  to  Antioch  and  telling  the 
Gentile  converts  that,  unless  they  were  circumcised,  they 
could  not  be  saved.  In  this  way  they  were  filling  them 
with  alarm,  lest  they  might  be  omitting  something  on 
which  the  welfare  of  their  souls  depended,  and  they  were 
confusing  their  minds  as  to  the  simplicity  of  the  gospel. 


118  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

To  quiet  these  disturbed  consciences  it  was  resolved  by 
the  church  at  Antioch  to  appeal  to  the  leading  apostles 
at  Jerusalem,  and  Paul  and  Barnabas  were  sent  thither 
to  procure  a  decision.  This  was  the  origin  of  what  is 
called  the  Council  of  Jerusalem,  at  which  this  question 
was  authoritatively  settled. 

The  decision  of  the  apostles  and  elders  was  in  har- 
mony with  Paul's  practice :  the  Gentiles  were  not  to  be 
required  to  be  circumcised ;  only  they  were  enjoined  to 
abstain  from  meat  offered  in  sacrifice  to  idols,  from  forni- 
cation, and  from  blood.  To  these  conditions  Paul  con- 
sented. He  did  not,  indeed,  see  any  harm  in  eating 
meat  which  had  been  used  in  idolatrous  sacrifices,  when 
it  was  exposed  for  sale  in  the  market ;  but  the  feasts  upon 
such  meat  in  the  idol  temples,  which  were  often  followed 
by  wild  outbreaks  of  sensuality,  alluded  to  in  the  pro- 
hibition of  fornication,  were  temptations  against  which 
the  converts  from  heathenism  required  to  be  warned. 
The  prohibition  of  blood — that  is,  of  eating  meat  killed 
without  the  blood  being  drained  off — was  a  concession  to 
extreme  Jewish  prejudice,  which,  as  it  involved  no  prin- 
ciple, he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  oppose. 

153.  So  the  agitating  question  appeared  to  be  settled 
by  an  authority  so  august  that  none  could  question  it. 
If  Peter,  John  and  James,  the  pillars  of  the  church  at 
Jerusalem,  as  well  as  Paul  and  Barnabas,  the  heads  of  the 
Gentile  mission,   arrived  at   a  unanimous  decision,   all 
consciences  might  be  satisfied  and  all  opposing  mouths 
stopped. 

154.  Attempt  to  Unsettle. — It  fills  us  with  amaze- 
ment to  discover  that  even  this  settlement  was  not  final. 
It  would  appear  that,  even  at  the  time  when  it  was  come 


HIS    GREAT    CONTROVERSY  1)9 

to,  it  was  fiercely  opposed  by  some  who  were  present  at 
the  meeting  where  it  was  discussed ;  and,  although  the 
authority  of  the  apostles  determined  the  official  note 
which  was  sent  to  the  distant  churches,  the  Christian 
community  at  Jerusalem  was  agitated  with  storms  of 
angry  opposition  to  it.  Nor  did  the  opposition  soon  die 
down.  On  the  contrary,  it  waxed  stronger  and  stronger. 
It  was  fed  from  abundant  sources.  Fierce  national  pride 
and  prejudice  sustained  it;  probably  it  was  nourished  by 
self-interest,  because  the  Jewish  Christians  would  live  on 
easier  terms  with  the  non-Christian  Jews  the  less  the 
difference  between  them  was  understood  to  be ;  religious 
conviction,  rapidly  warming  into  fanaticism,  strengthened 
it ;  and  very  soon  it  was  reinforced  by  all  the  rancor  of 
hatred  and  the  zeal  of  propagandism.  For  to  such  a 
height  did  this  opposition  rise  that  the  party  which  was 
inflamed  with  it  at  length  resolved  to  send  out  propa- 
gandists to  visit  the  Gentile  churches  one  by  one  and,  in 
contradiction  to  the  official  apostolic  rescript,  warn  them 
that  they  were  imperilling  their  souls  by  omitting  cir- 
cumcision, and  could  not  enjoy  the  privileges  of  true 
Christianity  unless  they  kept  the  Jewish  law. 

155.  For  years  and  years  these  emissaries  of  a  nar- 
row-minded fanaticism,  which  believed  itself  to  be  the 
only  genuine  Christianity,  diffused  themselves  over  all  the 
churches  founded  by  Paul  throughout  the  Gentile  world. 
Their  work  was  not  to  found  churches  of  their  own ;  they 
had  none  of  the  original  pioneer  ability  of  their  great 
rival.  Their  business  was  to  steal  into  the  Christian 
communities  he  had  founded  and  win  them  to  their  own 
narrow  views.  They  haunted  Paul's  footsteps  wherever 
he  went,  and  for  many  years  were  a  cause  to  him  of  un- 
speakable pain.  They  whispered  to  his  converts  that  his 


120  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

version  of  the  gospel  was  not  the  true  one,  and  that  his 
authority  was  not  to  be  trusted.  Was  he  one  of  the 
twelve  apostles?  Had  he  kept  company  with  Christ? 
They  represented  themselves  as  having  brought  the  true 
form  of  Christianity  from  Jerusalem,  the  sacred  head- 
quarters ;  and  they  did  not  scruple  to  profess  that  they 
had  been  sent  from  the  apostles  there.  They  distorted 
the  very  noblest  parts  of  Paul's  conduct  to  their  purpose. 
For  instance,  his  refusal  to  accept  money  for  his  services 
they  imputed  to  a  sense  of  his  own  lack  of  authority :  the 
real  apostles  always  received  pay.  In  the  same  way  they 
misconstrued  his  abstinence  from  marriage.  They  were 
men  not  without  ability  for  the  work  they  had  under- 
taken :  they  had  smooth,  insinuating  tongues,  they  could 
assume  an  air  of  dignity,  and  they  did  not  stick  at  trifles. 

156.  Unfortunately  they  were  by  no  means  without 
success.     They  alarmed  the  consciences  of  Paul's  converts 
and  poisoned  their  minds  against  him.     The  Galatian 
church  especially  fell  a  prey  to  them ;  and  the  Corinthian 
church  allowed  its  mind  to  be  turned  against  its  founder. 
But,  indeed,  the  defection  was  more  or  less  pronounced 
everywhere.      It  seemed  as  if  the  whole  structure  which 
Paul  had  reared  with  years  of  labor  was  to  be  thrown  to 
the  ground.     For  this  was  what  he  believed  to  be  hap- 
pening.    Though  these  men  called  themselves  Christians, 
Paul  utterly  denied  their  Christianity.    Theirs  was  not  an- 
other gospel ;  if  his  converts  believed  it,  he  assured  them 
they  were  fallen  from  grace ;    and  in  the  most  solemn 
terms  he  pronounced  a  curse  on  those  who  were  thus  de- 
stroying the  temple  of  God  which  he  had  built. 

157.  Paul  Crushes  the  Judaizers. — He  was  not, 
however,  the  man  to  allow  such  seduction  to  go  on  among 


HIS   GREAT   CONTROVERSY 

his  converts  without  putting  forth  the  most  strenuous 
efforts  to  counteract  it.  He  hurried,  when  he  could,  to 
see  the  churches  which  were  being  tampered  with;  he 
sent  messengers  to  bring  them  back  to  their  allegiance ; 
above  all,  he  wrote  letters  to  those  in  peril — letters  in 
which  the  extraordinary  powers  of  his  mind  were  exerted 
to  the  utmost.  He  argued  the  subject  out  with  all  the 
resources  of  logic  and  Scripture ;  he  exposed  the  seducers 
with  a  keenness  which  cut  like  steel  and  overwhelmed 
them  with  sallies  of  sarcastic  wit ;  he  flung  himself  at  his 
converts'  feet  and  with  all  the  passion  and  tenderness  of 
his  mighty  heart  implored  them  to  be  true  to  Christ  and 
to  himself.  We  possess  the  records  of  these  anxieties  in 
our  New  Testament ;  and  it  fills  us  with  gratitude  to  God 
and  a  strange  tenderness  to  Paul  himself  to  think  that 
out  of  his  heart-breaking  trial  there  has  come  such  a 
precious  heritage  to  us. 

158.  It  is  comforting  to  know  that  he  was  successful. 
Persevering  as  his  enemies  were,  he  was  more  than  a 
match  for  them.      Hatred  is  strong,  but  stronger  still  is 
love.      In  his  later  writings  the  traces  of  his  opposition 
are  slender  or  entirely  absent.      It  had  given  way  before 
the  crushing  force  of  his  polemic,  and  its  traces  had  been 
swept  off  the  soil  of  the  Church.      Had  the  event  been 
otherwise,  Christianity  would  have  been  a  river  lost  in 
the  sands  of  prejudice  near  its  very  source ;  it  would  have 
been  at  the  present  day  a  forgotten  Jewish  sect  instead  of 
the  religion  of  the  world. 

159.  Christian  Jews  and  the  Law.— Up  to  this 
point  the  course  of  this  ancient  controversy  can  be  clearly 
traced.   But  there  is  another  branch  of  it  about  the  course 
of  which  it  is  far  from  easy  to  arrive  at  with  certainty. 


138  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

What  was  the  relation  of  the  Christian  Jews  to  the  law, 
according  to  the  teaching  and  preaching  of  Paul  ?  Was 
it  their  duty  to  abandon  the  practices  by  which  they  had 
been  wont  to  regulate  their  lives  and  abstain  from  cir- 
cumcising their  children  or  teaching  them  to  keep  the 
law  ?  This  would  appear  to  be  implied  in  Paul's  prin- 
ciples. If  Gentiles  could  enter  the  kingdom  without 
keeping  the  law,  it  could  not  be  necessary  for  Jews  to 
keep  it.  If  the  law  was  a  severe  discipline  intended  to 
drive  men  to  Christ,  its  obligations  fell  away  when  this 
purpose  was  fulfilled.  The  bondage  of  tutelage  ceased 
as  soon  as  the  son  entered  on  the  actual  possession  of  his 
inheritance. 

160.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  the  other  apostles 
and  the  mass  of  the  Christians  of  Jerusalem  did  not  for 
many  a  day  realize  this.  The  apostles  had  agreed  not  to 
demand  from  the  Gentile  Christians  circumcision  and  the 
keeping  of  the  law.  But  they  kept  it  themselves  and 
expected  all  Jews  to  keep  it.  This  involved  a  contradic- 
tion of  ideas,  and  it  led  to  unhappy  practical  conse- 
quences. If  it  had  continued  or  been  yielded  to  by  Paul, 
it  would  have  split  up  the  Church  into  two  sections,  one 
of  which  would  have  looked  down  upon  the  other.  For 
it  was  part  of  the  strict  observance  of  the  law  to  refuse  to 
eat  with  the  uncircumcised ;  and  the  Jews  would  have 
refused  to  sit  at  the  same  table  with  those  whom  they 
acknowledged  to  be  their  Christian  brethren.  This  un- 
seemly contradiction  actually  came  to  pass  in  a  promi- 
nent instance.  The  Apostle  Peter,  chancing  on  one 
occasion  to  be  in  the  heathen  city  of  Antioch,  at  first 
mingled  freely  in  social  intercourse  with  the  Gentile 
Christians.  But  some  of  the  stricter  sort,  coming  thither 
from  Jerusalem,  so  cowed  him  that  he  withdrew  from  the 


HIS    GREAT    CONTROVERSY 

Gentile  table  and  held  aloof  from  his  fellow-Christians. 
Even  Barnabas  was  carried  away  by  the  same  tyranny  of 
bigotry.  Paul  alone  was  true  to  the  principles  of  gospel 
freedom,  withstanding  Peter  to  the  face  and  exposing  the 
inconsistency  of  his  conduct. 

161.  Paul  never,  indeed,  carried  on  a  polemic  against 
circumcision  and  the  keeping  of  the  law  among  born 
Jews.  This  was  reported  of  him  by  his  enemies ;  but  it 
was  a  false  report.  When  he  arrived  in  Jerusalem  at  the 
close  of  his  third  missionary  journey,  the  Apostle  James 
and  the  elders  informed  him  of  the  damage  which  this 
representation  was  doing  to  his  good  name  and  advised 
him  publicly  to  disprove  it.  The  words  in  which  they 
made  this  appeal  to  him  are  very  remarkable.  "Thou 
seest,  brother,"  they  said,  "how  many  thousands  of  Jews 
there  are  who  believe ;  and  they  are  all  zealous  of  the 
law ;  and  they  are  informed  of  thee  that  thou  teachest  all 
the  Jews  who  are  among  the  Gentiles  to  forsake  Moses, 
gaying  that  they  ought  not  to  circumcise  their  children, 
neither  to  walk  after  the  customs.  Do  therefore  this  that 
we  say  to  thee :  We  have  four  men  who  have  a  vow  on 
them.  Take  them  and  purify  thyself  with  them,  and  be 
at  charges  with  them,  that  they  may  shave  their  heads ; 
and  all  may  know  that  those  things  whereof  they  were 
informed  concerning  thee  are  nothing,  but  thou  thyself 
also  walkest  orderly  and  keepest  the  law. ' ' 

Paul  complied  with  this  appeal  and  went  through  the 
rite  which  James  recommended.  This  clearly  proves  that 
he  never  regarded  it  as  part  of  his  work  to  dissuade  born 
Jews  from  living  as  Jews.  It  may  be  thought  that  he 
ought  to  have  done  so — that  his  principles  required  a 
stern  opposition  to  everything  associated  with  the  dispen- 
sation which  had  passed  away.  He  understood  them 


1*4  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

differently,  however,  and  had  a  good  reason  to  render  for 
the  line  he  pursued. 

We  find  him  advising  those  who  were  called  into  the 
kingdom  of  Christ  being  circumcised  not  to  become  un- 
circumcised,  and  those  called  in  uncircumcision  not  to 
submit  to  circumcision ;  and  the  reason  he  gives  is  that 
circumcision  is  nothing  and  uncircumcision  is  nothing. 
The  distinction  was  nothing  more  to  him,  in  a  religious 
point  of  view,  than  the  distinction  of  sex  or  the  distinc- 
tion of  slave  and  master.  In  short,  it  had  no  religious 
significance  at  all.  If,  however,  a  man  professed  Jewish 
modes  of  life  as  a  mark  of  his  nationality,  Paul  had  no 
quarrel  with  him ;  indeed,  in  some  degree  he  preferred  them 
himself.  He  stickled  as  little  against  mere  forms  as  for 
them ;  only,  if  they  stood  between  the  soul  and  Christ  or 
between  a  Christian  and  his  brethren,  then  he  was  their 
uncompromising  opponent.  But  he  knew  that  liberty  may 
be  made  an  instrument  of  oppression  as  well  as  bondage, 
and,  therefore,  in  regard  to  meats,  for  instance,  he  penned 
those  noble  recommendations  of  self-denial  for  the  sake 
of  weak  and  scrupulous  consciences  which  are  among  the 
most  touching  testimonies  to  his  utter  unselfishness. 

162.  Indeed,  we  have  here  a  man  of  such  heroic  size 
that  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  define  him.  Along  with  the 
clearest  vision  of  the  lines  of  demarcation  between  the  old 
and  the  new  in  the  greatest  crisis  of  human  history  and 
an  unfaltering  championship  of  principle  when  real  issues 
were  involved,  we  see  in  him  the  most  genial  superiority 
to  mere  formal  rules  and  the  utmost  consideration  for  the 
feelings  of  those  who  did  not  see  as  he  saw.  By  one 
huge  blow  he  had  cut  himself  free  from  the  bigotry  of 
bondage ;  but  he  never  fell  into  the  bigotry  of  liberty, 
and  had  always  far  loftier  aims  in  view  than  the  mere 
logic  of  his  own  position. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  END 


Paragraphs  163-189. 

163,  164.    RETURN   TO  JERUSALEM.    Prophecy  of 

Approaching  Imprisonment. 
165-168,    ARREST.  166.  Tumult  in  Temple;  167.  Paul 

before  the  Sanhedrim;    168.  Plot  of  Zealots. 
169-172.    IMPRISONMENT    AT    CJESAREA.      170. 

Providential    Reason    for   this    Confinement.      171. 

Paul's  later  Gospel.     172.  His  Ethics. 
173-176.    JOURNEY     TO     ROME.      173.    Appeal  to 

Caesar.      174.    Voyage   to    Italy.      175.    Arrival  in 

Rome. 
176-182.    FIRST  IMPRISONMENT  AT  ROME.    176. 

Trial  delayed.    177-182.    Occupations  of  a  Prisoner. 

178.  His  Guards  Converted;    180.  Visits  of  Apostolic 

Helpers;    181.  Messengers  from  his  Churches;    182. 

His  Writings. 
183-188.    LAST   SCENES.     185.  Release  from  Prison; 

New  Journeys.    186.  Second  Imprisonment  at  Rome. 

187,  188.    Trial  and  Death. 
189.    EPILOGUE. 

163.  Return  to  Jerusalem. — After  completing  his 
brief  visit  to  Greece  at  the  close  of  his  third  missionary 
journey,  Paul  returned  to  Jerusalem.  He  must  by  this 
time  have  been  nearly  sixty  years  of  age ;  and  for  twenty 
years  he  had  been  engaged  in  almost  superhuman  labors. 
He  had  been  traveling  and  preaching  incessantly,  and 
carrying  on  his  heart  a  crushing  weight  of  cares.  His 
body  had  been  worn  with  disease  and  mangled  with  pun- 
ishments and  abuse ;  and  his  hair  must  have  been  whi- 

125 


126  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

tened,  and  his  face  furrowed  with  the  lines  of  age.  As 
yet,  however,  there  were  no  signs  of  his  body  breaking 
down,  and  his  spirit  was  still  as  keen  as  ever  in  its  enthu- 
siasm for  the  service  of  Christ. 

His  eye  was  specially  directed  to  Rome,  and,  before 
leaving  Greece,  he  sent  word  to  the  Romans  that  they 
might  expect  to  see  him  soon.  But,  as  he  was  hurrying 
toward  Jerusalem  along  the  shores  of  Greece  and  Asia, 
the  signal  sounded  that  his  work  was  nearly  done,  and 
the  shadow  of  approaching  death  fell  across  his  path. 
In  city  after  city  the  persons  in  the  Christian  commu- 
nities who  were  endowed  with  the  gift  of  prophecy  foretold 
that  bonds  and  imprisonment  were  awaiting  him,  and,  as 
he  came  nearer  to  the  close  of  his  journey,  these  warnings 
became  more  loud  and  frequent.  He  felt  their  solemnity ; 
his  was  a  brave  heart,  but  it  was  too  humble  and  reverent 
not  to  be  overawed  with  the  thought  of  death  and  judg- 
ment. He  had  several  companions  with  him,  but  he 
sought  opportunities  of  being  alone.  He  parted  from 
his  converts  as  a  dying  man,  telling  them  that  they  would 
see  his  face  no  more.  But,  when  they  entreated  him  to 
turn  back  and  avoid  the  threatened  danger,  he  gently 
pushed  aside  their  loving  arms,  and  said,  "What  mean 
ye  to  weep  and  to  break  my  heart  ?  for  I  am  ready  not 
to  be  bound  only,  but  also  to  die  at  Jerusalem  for  the 
name  of  the  Lord  Jesus." 

164.  We  do  not  know  what  business  he  had  on  hand 
which  so  peremptorily  demanded  his  presence  in  Jerusa- 
lem. He  had  to  deliver  up  to  the  apostles  a  collection 
on  behalf  of  their  poor  saints,  which  he  had  been  exerting 
himself  to  gather  in  the  Gentile  churches ;  and  it  may 
have  been  of  importance  that  he  should  discharge  this 
service  in  person.  Or  he  may  have  been  solicitous  to 


THE    END  1*7 

procure  from  the  apostles  a  message  for  his  Gentile 
churches,  giving  an  authoritative  contradiction  to  the 
insinuations  of  his  enemies  as  to  the  unapostolic  character 
of  his  gospel.  At  all  events  there  was  some  imperative 
call  of  duty  summoning  him,  and,  in  spite  of  the  fear  of 
death  and  the  tears  of  friends,  he  went  forward  to  his 
fate. 

165.  Paul's  Arrest. — It  was  the  feast  of  Pentecost 
when  he  arrived  in  the  city  of  his  fathers,  and,  as  usual 
at  such  seasons,  Jerusalem  was  crowded  with  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  pilgrim  Jews  from  all  parts  of  the  world. 
Among  these  there  could  not  but  be  many  who  had  seen 
him  at  the  work  of  evangelization  in  the  cities  of  the 
heathen  and  come  into  collision  with  him  there.     Their 
rage  against  him  had  been  checked  in  foreign  lands  by 
the  interposition  of  Gentile  authority ;  but  might  they  not, 
if  they  met  with  him  in  the  Jewish  capital,  wreak  on  him 
their  vengeance  with  the  support  of  the  whole  population  ? 

166.  This  was  actually  the  danger  into  which  he  fell. 
Certain  Jews  from  Ephesus,  the  principal  scene  of  his 
labors  during  his  third  journey,  recognized  him  in  the 
temple   and,  crying  out  that  here  was  the  heretic  who 
blasphemed  the  Jewish  nation,  law  and  temple,  brought 
about  him  in  an  instant  a  raging  sea  of  fanaticism.      It 
is  a  wonder  he  was  not  torn  limb  from  limb  on  the  spot ; 
but  superstition  prevented  his  assailants  from   defiling 
with  blood  the  court  of  the  Jews,  in  which  he  was  caught, 
and,  before  they  got  him  hustled  into  the  court  of  the 
Gentiles,  where  they  would  soon  have  despatched  him,  the 
Roman  guard,  whose  sentries  were  pacing  the  castle-ram- 
parts which  overlooked  the  temple- courts,  rushed  down 
and  took  him  under  their  protection;   and,  when  their 


1*8  THE   LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

captain  learned  that  he  was  a  Roman  citizen,  his  safety 
was  secured. 

167.  But    the   fanaticism    of    Jerusalem   was    now 
thoroughly  aroused,  and  it  raged  against  the  protection 
which  surrounded  Paul  like  an  angry  sea.     The  Roman 
captain  on  the  day  after  the  apprehension  took  him  down 
to  the  Sanhedrin  in  order  to  ascertain  the  charge  against 
him ;  but  the  sight  of  the  prisoner  created  such  an  uproar 
that  he  had  to  hurry  him  away,  lest  he  should  be  torn  in 
pieces.     Strange  city  and  strange  people!     There  was 
never  a  nation  which  produced  sons  more  richly  dowered 
with  gifts  to  make  her  name  immortal ;  there  was  never 
a  city  whose  children  clung  to  her  with  a  more  passionate 
affection ;  yet,  like  a  mad  mother,  she  tore  the  very  good- 
liest of  them  in  pieces  and  dashed  them  mangled  from 
her  breast.     Jerusalem  was  now  within  a  few  years  of  her 
destruction ;    here  was  the  last  of  her  inspired  and  pro- 
phetic sons  come  to  visit  her  for  the  last  time,  with 
boundless  love  to  her  in  his  heart ;  but  she  would  have 
murdered  him ;  and  only  the  shields  of  the  Gentiles  saved 
him  from  her  fury. 

168.  Forty  zealots  banded  themselves  together  under 
a  curse  to  snatch  Paul  even  from  the  midst  of  the  Roman 
swords ;    and  the  Roman  captain  was  only  able  to  foil 
their  plot  by  sending  him  under  a  heavy  escort  down  to 
Caesarea.     This  was  a  Roman  city  on  the  Mediterranean 
coast ;  it  was  the  residence  of  the   Roman   governor  of 
Palestine  and  the  headquarters  of  the  Roman  garrison ; 
and  in  it  the  apostle  was  perfectly  safe  from  Jewish 
violence. 

169.  Imprisonment    at   Caesarea. — Here    he    re- 
in  prison  for  two  years.     The  Jewish  authorities 


THE    END  129 

attempted  again  and  again  either  to  procure  his  condem- 
nation by  the  governor  or  to  get  him  delivered  up  to 
themselves,  to  be  tried  as  an  ecclesiastical  offender;  but 
they  failed  to  convince  the  governor  that  Paul  had  been 
guilty  of  any  crime  of  which  he  could  take  cognizance  or 
to  persuade  him  to  hand  over  a  Roman  citizen  to  their 
tender  mercies.  The  prisoner  ought  to  have  been  re- 
leased, but  his  enemies  were  so  vehement  in  asserting  that 
he  was  a  criminal  of  the  deepest  dye  that  he  was  detained 
on  the  chance  of  new  evidence  turning  up  against  him. 
Besides,  his  release  was  prevented  by  the  expectation  of 
the  corrupt  governor,  Felix,  that  the  life  of  the  leader  of 
a  religious  sect  might  be  purchased  from  him  with  a 
bribe.  Felix  was  interested  in  his  prisoner  and  even 
heard  him  gladly,  as  Herod  had  listened  to  the  Baptist. 

170.  Paul  was  not  kept  in  close  confinement;  he  had 
at  least  the  range  of  the  barracks  in  which  he  was  detained. 
There  we  can  imagine  him  pacing  the  ramparts  on  the 
edge  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  gazing  wistfully  across 
the  blue  waters  in  the  direction  of  Macedonia,  Achaia 
and  Ephesus,  where  his  spiritual  children  were  pining  for 
him  or  perhaps  encountering  dangers  in  which  they 
sorely  needed  his  presence. 

It  was  a  mysterious  providence  which  thus  arrested 
his  energies  and  condemned  the  ardent  worker  to  inactiv- 
ity. Yet  we  can  see  now  the  reason  for  it.  Paul  was 
needing  rest.  After  twenty  years  of  incessant  evangeliza- 
tion he  required  leisure  to  garner  the  harvest  of  experi- 
ence. During  all  that  time  he  had  been  preaching  that 
view  of  the  gospel  which  at  the  beginning  of  his  Chris- 
tian career  he  had  thought  out,  under  the  influence  of  the 
revealing  Spirit,  in  the  solitudes  of  Arabia.  But  he  had 
now  reached  a  stage  when,  with  leisure  to  think,  he  might 


130  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

penetrate  into  more  recondite  regions  of  the  truth  as  it  id 
in  Jesus.  And  it  was  so  important  that  he  should  have 
this  leisure  that,  in  order  to  secure  it,  God  even  permitted 
him  to  be  shut  up  in  prison. 

171.  PauTs  Later  Gospel. — During  these  two  years 
he  wrote  nothing ;  it  was  a  time  of  internal  mental  activ- 
ity and  silent  progress.  But,  when  he  began  to  write 
again,  the  results  of  it  were  at  once  discernible.  The 
Epistles  written  after  this  imprisonment  have  a  mellower 
tone  and  set  forth  a  profounder  view  of  doctrine  than  his 
earlier  writings.  There  is  no  contradiction,  indeed,  or 
inconsistency  between  his  earlier  and  later  views:  in 
Ephesians  and  Colossians  he  builds  on  the  broad  founda- 
tions laid  in  Romans  and  Galatians.  But  the  superstruc- 
ture is  loftier  and  more  imposing.  He  dwells  less  on  the 
work  of  Christ  and  more  on  His  person ;  less  on  the 
justification  of  the  sinner  and  more  on  the  sanctification 
of  the  saint. 

In  the  gospel  revealed  to  him  in  Arabia  he  had  set 
Christ  forth  as  dominating  mundane  history,  and  shown 
His  first  coming  to  be  the  point  toward  which  the  destinies 
of  Jews  and  Gentiles  had  been  tending.  In  the  gospel 
revealed  to  him  at  Caesarea  the  point  of  view  is  extra- 
mundane:  Christ  is  represented  as  the  reason  for  the 
creation  of  all  things,  and  as  the  Lord  of  angels  and  of 
worlds,  to  whose  second  coming  the  vast  procession  of  the 
universe  is  moving  forward — of  whom,  and  through 
whom,  and  to  whom  are  all  things. 

In  the  earlier  Epistles  the  initial  act  of  the  Christian 
life — the  justification  of  the  soul — is  explained  with  ex- 
haustive elaboration :  but  in  the  later  Epistles  it  is  on  the 
subsequent  relations  to  Christ  of  the  person  who  has  been 
already  justified  that  the  apostle  chiefly  dwells.  Accord- 


THE    END  131 

ing  to  his  teaching,  the  whole  spectacle  of  the  Christian 
life  is  due  to  a  union  between  Christ  and  the  soul ;  and 
for  the  description  of  this  relationship  he  has  invented 
a  vocabulary  of  phrases  and  illustrations :  believers  are 
in  Christ,  and  Christ  is  in  them :  they  have  the  same 
relation  to  Him  as  the  stones  of  a  building  to  the  founda- 
tion-stone, as  the  branches  to  the  tree,  as  the  members  to 
the  head,  as  a  wife  to  her  husband.  This  union  is  ideal, 
for  the  divine  mind  in  eternity  made  the  destiny  of  Christ 
and  the  believer  one;  it  is  legal,  for  their  debts  and 
merits  are  common  property ;  it  is  vital,  for  the  connec- 
tion with  Christ  supplies  the  power  of  a  holy  and  pro- 
gressive life;  it  is  moral,  for,  in  mind  and  heart,  in 
character  and  conduct,  Christians  are  constantly  becom- 
ing more  and  more  identical  with  Christ. 

172.  His  Ethics. — Another  feature  of  these  later 
Epistles  is  the  balance  between  their  theological  and  their 
moral  teaching.  This  is  visible  even  in  the  external 
structure  of  the  greatest  of  them,  for  they  are  nearly 
equally  divided  into  two  parts,  the  first  of  which  is 
occupied  with  doctrinal  statements  and  the  second  with 
moral  exhortations.  The  ethical  teaching  of  Paul  spreads 
itself  over  all  parts  of  the  Christian  life ;  but  it  is  not 
distinguished  by  a  systematic  arrangement  of  the  various 
kinds  of  duties,  although  the  domestic  duties  are  pretty 
fully  treated.  Its  chief  characteristic  lies  in  the  motives 
which  it  brings  to  bear  upon  conduct. 

To  Paul  Christian  morality  was  emphatically  a  moral- 
ity of  motives.  The  whole  history  of  Christ,  not  in  the 
details  of  His  earthly  life,  but  in  the  great  features  of  his 
redemptive  journey  from  heaven  to  earth  and  from  earth 
back  to  heaven  again,  as  seen  from  the  extramundane 
standpoint  of  these  Epistles,  is  a  series  of  examples  to  be 


132  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

copied  by  Christians  in  their  daily  conduct.  No  duty  is 
too  small  to  illustrate  one  or  other  of  the  principles  which 
inspired  the  divinest  acts  of  Christ.  The  commonest  acts 
of  humility  and  beneficence  are  to  be  imitations  of  the 
condescension  which  brought  Him  from  the  position  of 
equality  with  God  to  the  obedience  of  the  cross ;  and  the 
ruling  motive  of  the  love  and  kindness  practised  by 
Christians  to  one  another  is  to  be  the  recollection  of  their 
common  connection  with  Him. 

173.  Appeal  to  Caesar. — After  Paul's  imprisonment 
had  lasted  for  two  years,  Felix  was  succeeded  in  the  gov- 
ernorship of  Palestine  by  Festus.     The  Jews  had  never 
ceased  to  intrigue  to  get  Paul  into  their  hands,  and  they 
at  once  assailed  the  new  ruler  with  further  importunities. 
As  Festus  seemed  to  be  wavering,  Paul  availed  himself 
of  his  privilege  of  appeal  as  a  Roman  citizen  and  de- 
manded to  be  sent  to  Rome  and  tried  at  the  bar  of  the 
emperor.     This  could  not  be  refused  him ;  and  a  prisoner 
had  to  be  sent  to  Rome  at  once  after  such  an  appeal  was 
taken.      Very  soon,  therefore,  Paul  was  shipped  off  under 
the  charge  of  Roman  soldiers  and  in  the  company  of 
many  other  prisoners  on  their  way  to  the  same  destina- 
tion. 

174.  Voyage  to  Italy. — The  journal  of  the  voyage 
has  been  preserved  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  is 
acknowledged  to  be  the  most  valuable  document  in  exist- 
ence concerning  the  seamanship  of  ancient  times.      It  is 
also  a  precious  document  of  Paul's  life ;  for  it  shows  how 
his  character  shone  out  in  a  novel  situation.      A  ship  is  a 
kind  of  miniature  of  the  world.      It  is  a  floating  island, 
in  which  there  are  the  government  and  the  governed. 
But  the  government  is,  like  that  of  states,  liable  to  sudden 


THE    END  188 

social  upheavals,  in  which  the  ablest  man  is  thrown  to 
the  top.  This  was  a  voyage  of  extreme  perils,  which 
required  the  utmost  presence  of  mind  and  power  of  win- 
ning the  confidence  and  obedience  of  those  on  board. 
Before  it  was  ended  Paul  was  virtually  both  the  captain 
of  the  ship  and  the  general  of  the  soldiers ;  and  all  on 
board  owed  to  him  their  lives. 

175.  Arrival  in  Rome. — At  length  the  dangers  of 
the  deep  were  left  behind ;  and  Paul  found  himself  ap- 
proaching the  capital  of  the  Roman  world  by  the  Appian 
Road,  the  great  highway  by  which  Rome  was  entered  by 
travelers  from  the  East.  The  bustle  and  noise  increased 
as  he  neared  the  city,  and  the  signs  of  Roman  grandeur 
and  renown  multiplied  at  every  step.  For  many  years 
he  had  been  looking  forward  to  seeing  Rome,  but  he  had 
always  thought  of  entering  it  in  a  very  different  guise 
from  that  which  now  he  wore.  He  had  always  thought 
of  Rome  as  a  successful  general  thinks  of  the  central 
stronghold  of  the  country  he  is  subduing,  who  looks 
eagerly  forward  to  the  day  when  he  will  direct  the  charge 
against  its  gates.  Paul  was  engaged  in  the  conquest  of 
the  world  for  Christ,  and  Rome  was  the  final  position  he 
had  hoped  to  carry  in  his  Master's  name.  Years  ago  he 
had  sent  to  it  the  famous  challenge,  "I  am  ready  to 
preach  the  gospel  to  you  that  are  at  Rome  also ;  for  I  am 
not  ashamed  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,  for  it  is  the  power 
of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth. ' '  But 
now,  when  he  found  himself  actually  at  its  gates  and 
thought  of  the  abject  condition  in  which  he  was — an  old, 
gray-haired,  broken  man,  a  chained  prisoner  just  escaped 
from  shipwreck — his  heart  sank  within  him,  and  he  felt 
dreadfully  alone. 

At  the  right  moment,  however,  a  little  incident  took 


134  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

place  which  restored  him  to  himself:  at  a  small  town 
forty  miles  out  of  Rome  he  was  met  by  a  little  band  of 
Christian  brethren,  who,  hearing  of  his  approach,  had 
come  out  to  welcome  him ;  and,  ten  miles  farther  on,  he 
came  upon  another  group,  who  had  come  out  for  the 
same  purpose.  Self-reliant  as  he  was,  he  was  exceed- 
ingly sensitive  to  human  sympathy,  and  the  sight  of  these 
brethren  and  their  interest  in  him  completely  revived 
him.  He  thanked  God  and  took  courage ;  his  old  feel- 
ings came  back  in  their  wonted  strength ;  and,  when,  in 
the  company  of  these  friends,  he  reached  that  shoulder 
of  the  Alban  Hills  from  which  the  first  view  of  the  city 
is  obtained,  his  heart  swelled  with  the  anticipation  of 
victory ;  for  he  knew  he  carried  in  his  breast  the  force 
which  would  yet  lead  captive  that  proud  capital. 

It  was  not  with  the  step  of  a  prisoner,  but  with  that 
of  a  conqueror,  that  he  passed  at  length  beneath  the  city 
gate.  His  road  lay  along  that  very  Sacred  Way  by 
which  many  a  Roman  general  had  passed  in  triumph  to 
the  Capitol,  seated  on  a  car  of  victory,  followed  by  the 
prisoners  and  spoils  of  the  enemy,  and  surrounded  with 
the  plaudits  of  rejoicing  Rome.  Paul  looked  little  like 
such  a  hero :  no  car  of  victory  carried  him,  he  trode  the 
causewayed  road  with  wayworn  foot ;  no  medals  or  orna- 
ments adorned  his  person,  a  chain  of  iron  dangled  from 
his  wrist ;  no  applauding  crowds  welcomed  his  approach, 
a  few  humble  friends  formed  all  his  escort ;  yet  never  did 
a  more  truly  conquering  footstep  fall  on  the  pavement  of 
Rome  or  a  heart  more  confident  of  victory  pass  within 
her  gates. 

176.  Imprisonment. — Meanwhile,  however,  it  was 
not  to  the  Capitol  his  steps  were  bent,  but  to  a  prison ; 
and  he  was  destined  to  lie  in  prison  long,  for  his  trial  did 


THE    END  135 

not  come  on  for  two  years.  The  law's  delays  have  been 
proverbial  in  ail  countries  and  at  all  eras ;  and  the  law 
of  imperial  Rome  was  not  likely  to  be  free  from  this 
reproach  during  the  reign  of  Nero,  a  man  of  such  frivol- 
ity that  any  engagement  of  pleasure  or  freak  of  caprice 
was  sufficient  to  make  him  put  off  the  most  important  call 
of  business.  The  imprisonment,  it  is  true,  was  of  the 
mildest  description.  It  may  have  been  that  the  officer 
who  brought  him  to  Rome  spoke  a  good  word  for  the 
man  who  had  saved  his  life  during  the  vo}^age,  or  the 
officer  to  whom  he  was  handed  over,  and  who  is  known  in 
profane  history  as  a  man  of  justice  and  humanity,  may 
have  inquired  into  his  case  and  formed  a  favorable  opin- 
ion of  his  character ;  but  at  all  events  Paul  was  permitted 
to  hire  a  house  of  his  own  and  live  in  it  in  perfect  free- 
dom, with  the  single  exception  that  a  soldier,  who  was 
responsible  for  his  person,  was  his  constant  attendant. 

177.  Occupation  in  Prison. — This  was  far  from  the 
condition  which  such  an  active  spirit  would  have  coveted. 
He  would  have  liked  to  be  moving  from  synagogue  to 
synagogue  in  the  immense  city,  preaching  in  its  streets 
and  squares,  and  founding  congregation  after  congrega- 
tion among  the  masses  of  its  population.  Another  man, 
thus  arrested  in  a  career  of  ceaseless  movement  and  im- 
mured within  prison  walls,  might  have  allowed  his  mind 
to  stagnate  in  sloth  and  despair.  But  Paul  behaved  very 
differently.  Availing  himself  of  every  possibility  of  the 
situation,  he  converted  his  one  room  into  a  center  of 
far-reaching  activity  and  beneficence.  On  the  few  square 
feet  of  space  allowed  him  he  erected  a  fulcrum  with 
which  he  moved  the  world,  establishing  within  the  walls 
of  Nero's  capital  a  sovereignty  more  extensive  than  his 
own. 


136  THE   LIFE   OF   ST.    PAUL 

178.  Even  the  most  irksome  circumstance  of  his  lot 
was  turned  to  good  account.  This  was  the  soldier  by 
whom  he  was  watched.  To  a  man  of  Paul's  eager  tem- 
perament and  restlessness  of  mood  this  must  often  have 
been  an  intolerable  annoyance ;  and,  indeed,  in  the  letters 
written  during  this  imprisonment  he  is  constantly  refer- 
ring to  his  chain,  as  if  it  were  never  out  of  his  mind. 
But  he  did  not  suffer  this  irritation  to  blind  him  to  the 
opportunity  of  doing  good  presented  by  the  situation. 
Of  course  his  attendant  was  changed  every  few  hours,  as 
one  soldier  relieved  another  upon  guard.  In  this  way 
there  might  be  six  or  eight  with  him  every  four-and- 
Iwenty  hours.  They  belonged  to  the  imperial  guard,  the 
flower  of  the  Roman  army. 

Paul  could  not  sit  for  hours  beside  another  man  with- 
out speaking  of  the  subject  which  lay  nearest  his  heart. 
He  spoke  to  these  soldiers  about  their  immortal  souls  and 
the  faith  of  Christ.  To  men  accustomed  to  the  horrors  of 
Roman  warfare  and  the  manners  of  Roman  barracks  noth- 
ing could  be  more  striking  than  a  life  and  character  like 
his ;  and  the  result  of  these  conversations  was  that  many  of 
them  became  changed  men,  and  a  revival  spread  through 
the  barracks  and  penetrated  into  the  imperial  household 
itself.  His  room  was  sometimes  crowded  with  these  stern, 
bronzed  faces,  glad  to  see  him  at  other  times  than  those 
when  duty  required  them  to  be  there.  He  sympathized 
with  them  and  entered  into  the  spirit  of  their  occupation ; 
indeed,  he  was  full  of  the  spirit  of  the  warrior  himself. 

We  have  an  imperishable  relic  of  these  visits  in  an 
outburst  of  inspired  eloquence  which  he  dictated  at  this 
period :  ' i  Put  on  the  whole  armor  of  God,  that  ye  may  be 
able  to  stand  against  the  wiles  of  the  devil ;  for  we  wrestle 
not  against  flesh  and  blood,  but  against  principalities, 
against  powers,  against  the  rulers  of  the  darkness  of 


THE    END  137 

this  world,  against  spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places. 
Wherefore  take  unto  you  the  whole  armor  of  God,  that 
ye  may  be  able  to  withstand  in  the  evil  day  and,  having 
done  all,  to  stand.  Stand  therefore,  having  your  loins 
girt  about  with  truth,  and  having  on  the  breastplate  of 
righteousness,  and  your  feet  shod  with  the  preparation  of 
the  gospel  of  peace ;  above  all,  taking  the  shield  of  faith, 
wherewith  ye  shall  be  able  to  quench  all  the  fiery  darts  of 
the  wicked.  And  take  the  helmet  of  salvation  and  the 
sword  of  the  Spirit,  which  is  the  word  of  God. ' '  That 
picture  was  drawn  from  the  life,  from  the  armor  of  the 
soldiers  in  his  room ;  and  perhaps  these  ringing  sentences 
were  first  poured  into  the  ears  of  his  warlike  auditors 
before  they  were  transferred  to  the  Epistle  in  which  they 
have  been  preserved. 

179.  Visitors. — But  he  had  other  visitors.     All  who 
took  an  interest  in  Christianity  in  Rome,  both  Jews  and 
Gentiles,  gathered  to  him.      Perhaps  there  was  not  a  day 
of  the  two  years  of  his  imprisonment  but  he  had  such 
visitors.     The  Roman  Christians  learned  to  go  to  that 
room  as  to  an  oracle  or  shrine.     Many  a  Christian  teacher 
got  his  sword  sharpened  there ;  and  new  energy  began  to 
diffuse  itself  through  the  Christian  circles  of  the  city. 
Many  an  anxious  father  brought  his  son,  many  a  friend 
his  friend,  hoping  that  a  word  from  the  apostle's  lips 
might  waken  the  sleeping  conscience.     Many  a  wanderer, 
stumbling  in  there  by  chance,  came  out  a  new  man. 
Such  an  one  was   Onesimus,  a  slave  from   Colossae,  who 
arrived  in  Rome  as  a  runaway,  but  was  sent  back  to  his 
Christian  master,  Philemon,  no  longer  as  a  slave,  but  as 
a  brother  beloved. 

180.  Still   more  interesting  visitors  came.     At  all 


138  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

periods  of  his  life  he  exercised  a  strong  fascination  over 
young  men.  They  were  attracted  by  the  manly  soul 
within  him,  in  which  they  found  sympathy  with  their 
aspirations  and  inspiration  for  the  noblest  work.  These 
youthful  friends,  who  were  scattered  over  the  world  in  the 
work  of  Christ,  flocked  to  him  at  Rome.  Timothy  and 
Luke,  Mark  and  Aristarchus,  Tychicus  and  Epaphras, 
and  many  more  came,  to  drink  afresh  at  the  well  of  his 
ever-springing  wisdom  and  earnestness.  And  he  sent 
them  forth  again,  to  carry  messages  to  his  churches  or 
bring  him  news  of  their  condition. 

181.  Of  his  spiritual  children  in  the  distance  he 
never  ceased  to  think.  Daily  he  was  wandering  in  imag- 
ination among  the  glens  of  Galatia  and  along  the  shores 
of  Asia  and  Greece ;  every  night  he  was  praying  for  the 
Christians  of  Antioch  and  Ephesus,  of  Philippi  and 
Thessalonica  and  Corinth.  Nor  were  gratifying  proofs 
awanting  that  they  were  remembering  him.  Now  and 
then  there  would  appear  in  his  lodging  a  deputy  from 
some  distant  church,  bringing  the  greetings  of  his  con- 
verts or,  perhaps,  a  contribution  to  meet  his  temporal 
wants,  or  craving  his  decision  on  some  point  of  doctrine 
or  practice  about  which  difficulty  had  arisen.  These 
messengers  were  not  sent  empty  away :  they  carried  warm- 
hearted messages  of  golden  words  of  counsel  from  their 
apostolic  friend. 

Some  of  them  carried  far  more.  When  Epaphrodi- 
tus,  a  deputy  from  the  church  at  Philippi,  which  had  sent 
to  their  dear  father  in  Christ  an  offering  of  love,  was 
returning  home,  Paul  sent  with  him,  in  acknowledgment 
of  their  kindness,  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians,  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  his  letters,  in  which  he  lays  bare  his  very 
heart  and  every  sentence  glows  with  love  more  tender  than 


THE    END  189 

a  woman's.  When  the  slave  Onesimus  was  sent  back 
to  Colossae,  he  received,  as  the  branch  of  peace  to  offer 
to  his  master,  the  exquisite  little  Epistle  to  Philemon, 
a  priceless  monument  of  Christian  courtesy.  He  car- 
ried, too,  a  letter  addressed  to  the  church  of  the  town 
in  which  his  master  lived,  the  Epistle  to  the  Colos- 
sians. 

The  composition  of  these  Epistles  was  by  far  the  most 
important  part  of  Paul's  varied  prison  activity ;  and  he 
crowned  this  labor  with  the  writing  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  which  is  perhaps  the  profoundest  and  sublim- 
est  book  in  the  world.  The  Church  of  Christ  has  derived 
many  benefits  from  the  imprisonment  of  the  servants  of 
God;  the  greatest  book  of  uninspired  religious  genius, 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  was  written  in  a  jail;  but  never 
did  there  come  to  the  Church  a  greater  mercy  in  the 
disguise  of  misfortune  than  when  the  arrest  of  Paul's 
bodily  activities  at  Caesarea  and  Rome  supplied  him  with 
the  leisure  needed  to  reach  the  depths  of  truth  sounded  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians. 

182.  His  Writings. — It  may  have  seemea  a  dark 
dispensation  of  providence  to  Paul  himself  that  the  course 
of  life  he  had  pursued  so  long  was  so  completely  changed ; 
but  God's  thoughts  are  higher  than  man's  thoughts  and 
His  ways  than  man's  ways ;  and  He  gave  Paul  grace  to 
overcome  the  temptations  of  his  situation  and  do  far  more 
in  his  enforced  inactivity  for  the  welfare  of  the  world 
and  the  permanence  of  his  own  influence  than  he  could 
have  done  by  twenty  years  of  wandering  missionary  work. 
Sitting  in  his  room,  he  gathered  within  the  sounding 
cavity  of  his  sympathetic  heart  the  sighs  and  cries  of 
thousands  far  away,  and  diffused  courage  and  help  in 
every  direction  from  his  own  inexhaustible  resources. 


140  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

He  sank  his  mind  deeper  and  deeper  in  solitary  thought, 
till,  smiting  the  rock  in  the  dim  depth  to  which  he  had 
descended,  he  caused  streams  to  gush  forth  which  are  still 
gladdening  the  city  of  God. 

183.  Release  from  Prison. — The  book  of  Acts  sud- 
denly breaks  off  with  a  brief  summary  of  Paul's  two 
years'  imprisonment  at  Rome.      Is  this  because  there  was 
no  more  to  tell  ?     When  his  trial  came  on,  did  it  issue 
in  his  condemnation  and  death  ?     Or  did  he  get  out  of 
prison  and  resume  his  old  occupations?     Where  Luke's 
lucid  narrative  so  suddenly  deserts  us,  tradition  comes  in 
proffering  its  doubtful  aid.      It  tells   us   that   he  was 
acquitted  on   his  trial  and  let  out  of  prison ;    that  he 
resumed  his  travels,  visiting  Spain  among  other  places ; 
but  that  before  long  he  was  arrested  again  and  sent  back 
to  Rome,  where  he  died  a  martyr's  death  at  the  cruel 
hands  of  Nero. 

184.  New  Journeys. — Happily,  however,  we  are  not 
altogether  dependent  on  the  precarious  aid  of  tradition. 
We  have  writings  of  Paul's  own  undoubtedly  subsequent 
to  the  two  years  of  his  first  imprisonment.      These  are 
what  are  called  the   Pastoral   Epistles — the  Epistles  to 
Timothy  and  Titus.     In  these  we  see  that  he  regained  his 
liberty  and  resumed  his  employment  of  revisiting  his  old 
churches  and  founding  new  ones.      His  footsteps  cannot, 
indeed,  be  any  longer  traced  with  certainty.      We  find 
him  back  at  Ephesus  and  Troas ;  we  find  him  in  Crete, 
an  island  at  which  he  touched  on  his  voyage  to  Rome  and 
in  which  he  may  then  have  become  interested ;    we  find 
him  exploring  new  territory   in  the  northern  parts  of 
Greece.     We  see  him  once  more,  like  the  commander  of 
an  army  who  sends  his  aides-de-camp  all  over  the  field  of 


THE    END  141 

battle,  sending  out  his  young  assistants  to  organize  and 
watch  over  the  churches. 

185.  But  this  was  not  to  last  long.      An  event  had 
happened  immediately  after  his  release  from  prison  which 
could  not  but  influence  his  fate.     This  was  the  burning 
of  Rome — an  appalling  disaster,  the  glare  of  which  even 
at  this  distance  makes  the  heart  shudder.      It  was  proba- 
bly a  mad  freak  of  the  malicious  monster  who  then  wore 
the  imperial  purple.      But  Nero  saw  fit  to  attribute  it  to 
the  Christians,  and  instantly  the  most  atrocious  persecu- 
tion broke  out  against  them.      Of  course  the  fame  of  this 
soon  spread  over  the  Roman  world ;  and  it  was  not  likely 
that   the   foremost   apostle   of   Christianity   could   long 
escape.      Every  Roman  governor  knew  that  he  could  not 
do  the  emperor  a  more  pleasing  service  than  by  sending 
to  him  Paul  in  chains. 

186.  Second  Imprisonment. — It  was  not  long,  ac- 
cordingly, before  Paul  was  lying  once  more  in  prison  at 
Rome ;  and  it  was  no  mild  imprisonment  this  time,  but 
the  worst  known  to  the  law.      No  troops  of  friends  now 
filled  his  room ;    for  the  Christians  of  Rome  had  been 
massacred  or  scattered,  and  it  was  dangerous  for  any  one 
to  avow  himself  a  Christian.      We  have  a  letter  written 
from  his  dungeon,  the   last  he  ever  wrote,  the  Second 
Epistle  to  Timothy,  which  affords  us  a  glimpse  of  un- 
speakable pathos  into  the  circumstances  of  the  prisoner. 
He  tells  us  that  one  part  of  his  trial   is  already  over. 
Not  a  friend  stood  by  him  as  he  faced  the  bloodthirsty 
tyrant  who  sat  on  the   judgment-seat.      But  the   Lord 
stood  by  him  and  enabled  him  to  make  the  emperor  and 
the  spectators  in  the  crowded  basilica  hear  the  sound  of 
the  gospel.     The  charge  against  him  had  broken  down« 


THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

But  he  had  no  hope  of  escape.  Other  stages  of  the  trial 
had  yet  to  come,  and  he  knew  that  evidence  to  condemn 
him  would  either  be  discovered  or  manufactured. 

The  letter  betrays  the  miseries  of  his  dungeon.  He 
prays  Timothy  to  bring  a  cloak  he  had  left  at  Troas,  to 
defend  him  from  the  damp  of  the  cell  and  the  cold  of  the 
winter.  He  asks  for  his  books  and  parchments,  that  he 
may  relieve  the  tedium  of  his  solitary  hours  with  the 
studies  he  had  always  loved.  But,  above  all,  he  beseeches 
Timothy  to  come  himself ;  for  he  was  longing  to  feel  the 
touch  of  a  friendly  hand  and  see  the  face  of  a  friend  yet 
once  again  before  he  died. 

Was  the  brave  heart  then  conquered  at  last?  Read 
the  Epistle  and  see.  How  does  it  begin ?  "I  also  suffer 
these  things ;  nevertheless  I  am  not  ashamed ;  for  I  know 
whom  I  have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  He  is  able 
to  keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  Him  against 
that  day."  How  does  it  end?  "I  am  now  ready  to  be 
offered,  and  the  time  of  my  departure  is  at  hand.  I  have 
fought  a  good  fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have 
kept  the  faith.  Henceforth  there  is  laid  up  for  me  a 
crown  of  righteousness,  which  the  Lord,  the  righteous 
Judge,  shall  give  me  at  that  day ;  and  not  to  me  only, 
but  unto  all  them  that  love  His  appearing."  That  is 
not  the  strain  of  the  vanquished. 

187.  Trial. — There  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  ap- 
peared again  at  Nero's  bar,  and  this  time  the  charge  did 
not  break  down.  In  all  history  there  is  not  a  more  start- 
ling illustration  of  the  irony  of  human  life  than  this 
scene  of  Paul  at  the  bar  of  Nero,  On  the  judgment-seat, 
clad  in  the  imperial  purple,  sat  a  man  who  in  a  bad  world 
had  attained  the  eminence  of  being  the  very  worst  and 
meanest  being  in  it — a  man  stained  with  every  crime,  the 


THE    END  143 

murderer  of  his  own  mother,  of  his  wives  and  of  his  best 
benefactors ;  a  man  whose  whole  being  was  so  steeped  in 
every  namable  and  unnamable  vice  that  body  and  soul 
of  him  were,  as  some  one  said  at  the  time,  nothing  but  a 
compound  of  mud  and  blood ;  and  in  the  prisoner's  dock 
stood  the  best  man  the  world  contained,  his  hair  whitened 
with  labors  for  the  good  of  men  and  the  glory  of  God. 
Such  was  the  occupant  of  the  seat  of  justice,  and  such 
the  man  who  stood  in  the  place  of  the  criminal. 

188.  Death. — The  trial  ended,  Paul  was  condemned 
and  delivered  over  to  the  executioner.      He  was  led  out 
of  the  city  with  a  crowd  of  the  lowest  rabble  at  his  heels. 
The  fatal  spot  was  reached ;    he  knelt  beside  the  block ; 
the  headsman's  axe  gleamed  in  the  sun  and  fell ;  and  the 
head  of  the  apostle  of  the  world  rolled  down  in  the  dust. 

189.  So  sin  did   its  uttermost  and  its  worst.      Yet 
how  poor  and  empty  was  its  triumph !     The  blow  of  the 
axe  only  smote  off  the  lock  of  the  prison  and  let  the  spirit 
go  forth  to  its  home  and  to  its  crown.     The  city  falsely 
called  eternal  dismissed  him  with  execration   from  her 
gates ;  but  ten  thousand  times  ten  thousand  welcomed  him 
in  the  same  hour  at  the  gates  of  the  city  which  is  really 
eternal.      Even  on  earth  Paul  could  not  die.      He  lives 
among  us  to-day  with  a  life  a  hundredfold  more  influ- 
ential than  that  which  throbbed  in  his  brain  whilst  the 
earthly  form  which  made  him  visible  still  lingered  on  the 
earth.     Wherever  the  feet  of  them  who  publish  the  glad 
tidings  go  forth  beautiful  upon  the  mountains,  he  walks 
by  their  side  as  an  inspirer  and  a  guide ;  in  ten  thousand 
churches  every   Sabbath   and  on   a   thousand   thousand 
hearths  every  day  his  eloquent  lips  still  teach  that  gospel 
of  which  he  was  never  ashamed ;  and,  wherever  there  are 


144  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

human  souls  searching  for  the  white  flower  of  holiness  or 
climbing  the  difficult  heights  of  self-denial,  there  he 
whose  life  was  so  pure,  whose  devotion  to  Christ  was  so 
entire,  and  whose  pursuit  of  a  single  purpose  was  so 
unceasing,  is  welcomed  as  the  best  of  friends. 


HINTS  TO  TEACHERS  AND  QUESTIONS 
FOR  PUPILS 

Teacher's  Apparatus. — English  theology  has  no 
juster  cause  for  pride  than  the  books  it  has  produced  on 
the  Life  of  Paul.  Perhaps  there  is  no  other  subject  in 
which  it  has  so  outdistanced  all  rivals.  Conybeare  and 
Howson's  Life  and  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  will  probably  al- 
ways keep  the  foremost  place ;  in  many  respects  it  is  near- 
ly perfect ;  and  a  teacher  who  has  mastered  it  will  be  suffi- 
ciently equipped  for  his  work  and  require  no  other  help. 
The  works  of  Lewin  and  Farrar  are  written  on  the  same 
lines ;  the  former  is  rich  in  maps  of  countries  and  plans 
of  towns ;  and  the  strong  point  of  the  latter  is  the  analysis 
of  Paul's  writings — the  exposition  of  the  mind  of  Paul. 
Sir  William  Ramsay  has  made  the  whole  subject  pecul- 
iarty  his  own  by  the  enthusiasm  and  labors  of  a  lifetime. 
The  German  books  are  not  nearly  so  valuable.  Haus- 
rath's  The  Apostle  Paul  is  a  brilliant  performance,  but 
it  is  as  weak  in  handling  the  deeper  things  as  it  is  strong 
in  coloring  up  the  external  and  picturesque  features  of 
the  subject.  Baur's  work  is  an  amazingly  clever  tour  de 
force,  but  it  is  not  so  much  a  well-proportioned  picture 
of  the  apostle  as  a  prolonged  paradox  thrown  down  as  a 
challenge  to  the  learned.  The  latest  large  German  work, 
Clemen's  Paulus,  proceeds  on  the  principle  that  the 
miracle  is  untrue,  and  the  effect  may  be  sufficiently  seen 
in  the  account  it  gives  of  the  first  visit  to  Philippi.  In 
Weinal's  Paulus,  pp.  312,  313,  there  appears  a  forbidding 
picture  of  the  effects  produced  by  the  teaching  of  the 

145 


146  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

subject  in  the  author's  country ;  in  our  country,  on  the 
contrary,  it  has  long  been  among  the  most  attractive 
subjects  for  both  teachers  and  students.  Adolphe  Monod's 
Saint  Paul,  a  series  of  five  discourses,  is  an  inquiry  into 
the  secret  of  the  apostle's  life,  written  with  deep  sympathy 
and  glowing  eloquence;  and  Kenan's  work,  with  the 
same  title,  gives,  with  unrivaled  brilliance,  a  picture  of  the 
world  in  which  the  apostle  lived,  if  not  of  the  apostle 
himself.  There  are  books  on  the  subject  which  do  honor 
to  American  scholarship  from  the  pens  of  Cone,  Gilbert, 
Bacon  and  A.  T.  Robertson,  the  last  mentioned  with  a 
valuable  bibliography.  But  the  best  help  is  to  be  found 
in  the  original  sources  themselves — the  cameolike  pictures 
of  Luke  and  the  self -revelations  of  Paul's  Epistles.  The 
latter  especially,  read  in  the  fresh  translation  of  Cony 
beare,  will  show  the  apostle  to  any  one  who  has  eyes  to 
see.  Johnstone's  wall-map  of  Paul's  journey  is  indis- 
pensable in  the  class-room. 

CHAPTER   I 

Paragraph  2.  Subject  of  class  essay — Paul  and  the 
other  Apostles :  Points  of  Connection  and  Contrast. 

5.  Subject  of  class  essay — Relation  of  Christianity  to 
Learning  and  Intellectual  Gifts  i  its  Use  of  them  and  its 
Independence  of  them. 

9»    Quote  passages  of  Scripture  in  which  Paul's  destination 
to  be  the  missionary  of  the  Gentiles  is  expressed. 


CHAPTER   II 

On  the  external  features  of  the  period  embraced  is 
this  chapter  compare  the  corresponding  pages  of  Hausrath ; 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  147 

on  the  internal  features  see  Principal  Rainy's  lecture  on 
Paul  in  The  Evangelical  Succession  Lectures,  vol.  i. 

14.  On  the  chronology  of  Paul's  life  see  the  notes  at 
the  end  of  Conybeare  and  Howson,  and  Farrar,  ii.  623. 

The  principal  dates  may  be  given  at  this  stage  from 
Conybeare  and  Howson,  for  reference  throughout : 


36.   Conversion. 

38.   Flight  to  Tarsus. 

44.   Brought  to  Antioch  by  Barnabas. 

48.   First  Missionary  Journey. 

50.    Council  at  Jerusalem. 

51-54.    Second  Missionary  Journey.      1  and  2  Thessa- 

lonians  written  at  Corinth. 
54-58.   Third  Missionary  Journey. 

57.  1  Corinthians  written  at  Ephesus;   2  Corinthians,  in 

Macedonia;   Galatians,  at  Corinth. 

58.  Romans  written  at  Corinth. 

Arrest  at  Jerusalem. 
59-    In  prison  at  Csesarea. 
60.   Voyage  to  Rome. 

62.  Philemon,  Colossians,  Ephesians,  Philippians,  writ- 

ten at  Rome. 

63.  Release  from  prison. 

67-    1  Timothy  and  Titus  written. 
68.    In  prison  again  at  Rome.      2  Timothy. 
Death. 

With  these  may  be  compared  some  of  Ramsay's  dates 
— the  conversion,  33 ;  First  Missionary  Journey,  47-49 ; 
Second,  50-53;  Third,  53-57;  Voyage  to  Rome,  59,  60; 
Trial  and  Acquittal,  61 ;  Second  Trial,  67. 

Whereas  Conybeare  and  Howson  consider  Galatians 
to  have  been  written,  in  close  conjunction  with  Romans, 
at  Corinth  during  the  Fourth  Missionary  Journey,  Ram- 
say believes  it  to  have  been  written  at  Antioch  before  this 


148  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

journey  commenced ;  and,  whereas  the  older  authorities 
suppose  it  to  be  addressed  to  Galatians  evangelized  by 
Paul  during  the  Second  Missionary  Journey,  though  no 
details  of  such  a  conquest  are  found  in  Acts,  Ramsay 
holds  the  recipients  of  the  Epistle  to  have  been  the 
churches  in  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor  evangelized  dur- 
ing the  First  Missionary  Journey,  the  regions  of  Phrygia 
and  Lycaonia  in  which  these  were  situated  forming  at  that 
time  part  of  the  Province  of  Galatia,  the  boundaries 
of  which  had  been  extended.  This  is  the  South  Gal- 
atian  theory,  the  fullest  statement  and  defence  of  which 
will  be  found  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible, 
vol.  v. 

15.  The    goat's-hair   cloth   was  called   "cilicium," 
from  the  name  of  the  province. 

16.  Dean   Howson's  Metaphors  of  St.  Paul.      Also 
Hausrath,  p.  15. 

18.   Compare  the  long  lists  of  sins  frequent  in  the 
Epistle. 

23.  Subject  for  class  essay:    Paul's   First  Sight  of 
Jerusalem. 

27.  A  startling  picture  of   the   state  of  society   in 
Jerusalem  might  be  constructed  from  the  materials  sup- 
plied in  Matt,  xxiii. 

28.  Detailed  comparison  of  the  experience  of  Paul 
with  that  of  Luther :  their  early  religious  ideas ;  the  state 
of  religion  around  them  ;    their  failure  to  find  peace  and 
their   sufferings  of  conscience ;    their  discovery  of   the 
righteousness  of  God. 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  149 

On  the  religious  associations  of  Paul's  early  life  see 
the  first  100  pages  of  Reuss'  Christian  Theology  in  the 
Apostolic  Age. 

31.  On  the  history  of  Christianity  between  the  death 
of  Christ  and  the  conversion  of  St.  Paul  see  Dykes'  From 
Jerusalem  to  Antioch. 

34.  The  question  whether  Paul  was  married.      His 
views  on  the  place  of  woman. 

35.  Perhaps  Acts  xxvi.    11  may  not  imply  that  any 
of  the  Christians  yielded  to  his  endeavors  to  make  them 
blaspheme. 

15.  What  was  the  Latin  name  for  a  town  enjoying  the 

political  privileges  possessed  by  Tarsus  ? 

16.  What  are  Paul's  principal  metaphors  ? 

17.  Where  does  he  make  this  boast  ? 

19*  What  was  the  Latin  name  for  the  Roman  citizenship, 
and  what  privileges  did  it  include  ?  On  what  occa- 
sions is  Paul  recorded  to  have  used  it  ?  On  what 
occasions  might  he  have  been  expected  to  use  it,  when 
he  omitted  to  do  so  ?  What  reasons  may  be  given 
for  the  omission  ? 

20.  Name  friends  of  Paul  who  were  engaged  in  the  same 

trade  as  he. 

21.  Give  Paul's  quotations  from  the  Greek  poets.     Do 

you  know  the  authors  he  quoted  from  ?     Explain 
Septuagint  and  Diaspora. 

22.  Where  does  Paul  refer  to  the  sophists  and  rhetoricians  ? 
26.  Make  a  collection  of  Paul's  quotations  from  the  Old 

Testament,  showing  whence  each  of  them  was  taken. 
28.    What  does  Paul  mean  by  the  Law? 
32.    Trace  out  the  points  of  contact  between  the  language 

and  views  of  Stephen's  speech  and  those  of  Paul. 
Explain — 

"Si  Stephanus  non  orasset, 
Ecclesia  Paulum  non  haberet/' 


150  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

34.    Where  is  it  said  that  Paul  voted  in  the  Sanhedrim  ? 
45.    Collect  Paul's  references  to  the  persecution  and  bring 
out  how  severe  it  was. 


CHAPTER   III 

On  Paul's  mental  processes  before  and  at  the  time 
of  his  conversion  see  Principal  Rainy's  lecture,  already 
quoted. 

The  conversion  of  Paul  is  one  of  the  strong  apologetic 
positions  of  Christianity.  See  this  worked  out  in  Lyttel- 
ton's  Conversion  of  St.  Paul.  But  it  might  be  worked 
out  afresh  on  more  modern  lines. 

40.  Principal  Rainy,  in  the  lecture  above  referred  to, 
says  that  he  sees  no  evidence  of  such  a  conflict  as  this  in 
Paul's  mind;    but  what,  then,  is  the  meaning  of  " It  is 
hard  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  pricks"? 

41.  The  general  tenor  of  the  earliest  Christian  apol- 
ogetic, as  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  speeches  of  the  Acts  of 
the  Apostles. 

44.  Nothing  could  be  more  alien  to  the  spirit  of  the 
New  Testament  than  to  turn  this  round  the  other  way, 
and,  assuming  that  what  Paul  saw  was  only  a  vision, 
argue  that  the  other  appearances  of  Christ,  because  they 
are  put  on  the  same  level,  may  have  been  only  visions 
too.  This  is  a  mere  stroke  of  dialectical  cleverness, 
which  shows  no  regard  to  the  obvious  intention  of  the 
writers. 

There  are  three  accounts  of  the  conversion  of  Paul  in  the 
Acts.  What  is  the  significance  of  this  reduplica- 
tion in  so  small  a  book  ?  Enumerate  the  differences 
between  these  accounts,  and  explain  them. 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  151 

88.    Prove  that  thejirst  Christians  called  Christianity  THB 
WAY,  and  explain  the  signification  of  this  name. 


CHAPTER    IV 

On  the  subject  of  this  chapter  see  the  works  on  Paul- 
ine Theology  by  Pfleiderer,  Bruce,  Du  Bose,  Titius  and 
Stevens,  also  the  relevant  portions  of  any  of  the  Hand- 
books of  New  Testament  Theology — Weiss,  Reuss, 
Schmid,  van  Oosterzee,  Beyschlag,  Holtzmann,  and 
Stevens.  Weiss'  exposition  is  among  the  most  solid  and 
trustworthy.  He  divides  Paulinism  into  four  sections : — 

I.  THE  EARLIEST  GOSPEL  OF  PAUL  DURING  THE  HEATHEN 
MISSION  (gathered  from  Thessalonians).  One 
chapter — the  Gospel  as  the  Way  of  Deliverance 
from  Judgment. 

II.  THE  DOCTRINAL  SYSTEM  OF  THE  FOUR  GREAT  DOCTRI- 
NAL AND  CONTROVERSIAL  EPISTLES  (Corinthians, 
Romans,  Galatians).  Ch.  i.  Universal  Sinfulness 
of  Man;  ch.  ii.  Heathenism  and  Judaism;  ch.  iii. 
Prophecy  and  Fulfilment;  ch.  iv.  Christology;  ch. 
v.  Redemption  and  Justification;  ch.  vi.  The  New 
Life;  ch.  vii.  The  Doctrine  of  Predestination;  ch. 
viii.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Church;  ch.  ix.  The 
Last  Things. 

III.  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  DOCTRINE  IN  THE  EPISTLES 

WRITTEN  IN  PRISON  (Colossians,  Ephesians,  Philip- 
pians,  Philemon).  Ch.  i.  The  Pauline  Founda- 
tions; ch.  ii.  Further  Development  of  Doctrine. 

IV.  THE    TEACHING    OF    THE    PASTORAL    EPISTLES.       One 

chapter — Christianity  as  Doctrine. 

51.  Subject  for  class  essay.     The  Sources  of  St.  Paul's 
Theology. 

52.  Luther  in  the  Wartburg. 


152  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

54-65.  As  these  paragraphs  are  nothing  but  a  para- 
phrase of  Rom.  i.-viii.,  pupils  ought  to  be  asked  to  com- 
pare with  them  the  corresponding  paragraphs  of  the 
Epistle. 

56.  Compare  Tholuck,  The  Moral  Character  of 
Heathendom. 

65.  On  Paul's  Psychology  see  the  monograph  of 
Simon  and  the  Handbooks  of  Biblical  Psychology  by 
Delitzsch  and  Beck :  also  Heard,  The  Tripartite  Nature 
of  Man,  Laidlaw,  The  Bible  Doctrine  of  Man,  and  Dick- 
son,  St.  Paul's  Use  of  the  Terms  Flesh  and  Spirit. 

67.  Compare  Somerville,  St.  Paul's  Conception  of 
Christ,  and  Knowling,  The  Testimony  of  St.  Paul  to 
Christ. 

51.    Where  does  Paul  mention  his  journey  to  Arabia? 

56.  What  is  the  connection  between  moral  and  intellectual 
degeneracy  ? 

62.  Where  does  Paul  speak  of  the  Gospel  as  a"  mystery, ' ' 
and  what  does  he  mean  by  this  word  ? 

65.  Does  Paul  divide  human  nature  into  two  or  into 
three  sections  ?  Do  yon  know  the  theological 
names  for  these  alternatives?  Does  Paul  regard 
the  unregenerate  man  as  possessing  the  part  of 
human  nature  which  he  calls  "spirit"  ? 

67.  Enumerate  the  incidents  of  Christ's  earthly  life  referred 
to  by  Paul, 


CHAPTER    V 

On  this  subject  see  the  first  two  chapters  of  Conybeare 
and  Howson;  New  Testament  Time*  of  Hausrath  or 
Schiirer;  Fairweather,  From  the  Eocile  to  the  Advent, 
Moss,  From  Malachi  to  Matthew. 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  153 

72.  Subject  of  class  essay:  The  Origin  and  Signifi- 
cance of  the  name  * '  Christian. ' ' 

72.  By  what  other  names  were  the  Christians  called  in 
Neiu  Testament  times,  among  themselves  or  among 
their  enemies  ? 

78.  What  did  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  and  the  Jews 
severally  contribute  to  Christianity  ? 


CHAPTER   VI 

The  aim  of  this  Handbook,  as  of  The  Life  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  same  series,  being  to  show  at  a  single 
glance  the  general  course  of  the  life  and  the  principal 
objects  it  touched,  a  good  many  details  have  been  omitted. 
This  is  especially  the  case  in  this  chapter  and  in  chapter 
x.  The  omissions  cause  those  great  features  to  stand  out 
more  prominently  which  details  are  apt  to  obscure.  In 
this  chapter  an  endeavor  has  been  made  to  show  in  this 
way  what  were  the  different  regions  into  which  the  apostle 
traveled,  and  what  the  peculiarities  and  the  extent  of  the 
work  he  did  in  each.  But  in  an  extended  Bible  Class 
course  the  lessons  will  naturally  go  more  into  detail,  and 
perhaps  the  incidents  which  took  place  in  each  town  may 
generally  form  a  lesson.  Here,  therefore,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  chap^  x.,  a  few  hints  may  be  given  of  the 
viewpoints  for  the  lessons,  in  so  far  as  these  are  not 
already  supplied  in  the  text. 

Acts    xiii.  1-12.  First  Footsteps  of  Christian  Missions. 
"     14-52.  Antioch.    Paul's  Missionary  Method, 
xiv.  1-6.  Iconium.     Among  the  Jews. 
"     6-20.  Lystra.    Among  the  Heathens. 
"     21-28.  Paul  as  a  Pastor. 
"         xv.  Paul  as  an  Ecclesiastic. 


154  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

Acts     xvi.  1-6.  The  New  Companion. 

6-10.  Opening  up  Virgin  Soil. 

"          "     12-40.  Philippi.     Transfiguration  and  Dis- 
figuration of  Humanity. 

xvii.  l-Q.  Thessalonica.  An  Honorable  Reproach. 
"     10-1 4>.  Bercea.     Rare  Freedom  from  Preju- 
dice. 
"     15-34.  Athens.  The  Gospel  and  Intellectual 

Curiosity. 
"      xviii.  1~3.  Corinth.     Paul's  earthly  Home. 

4-17.  The    Missionary's    Discouragements 

and  Encouragements. 

"     23-28.  A  polished  Shaft  in  God's  Quiver, 
xix.  Ephesus.  See   the  text.      Also,  Conflict  of 
Christianity  with  Vested  Interests  and 
Mob  Violence. 

79.   Howson's  Companion*  of  St.  Paul. 

81.  A  minute  inspection  of  Acts  xiii.  9  will  confirm 
the  view  here  given  of  the  change  of  name,  though  it  is 
difficult  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  the  conversion  of  the 
governor,  who  bore  the  same  name,  had  something  to  do 
with  it. 

84.  On  the  worship  of  the  synagogue  see  Farrar's 
Life  of  Christ,  i.  220. 

89.  On  the  Council  of  Jerusalem,  which  took  place 
between  the  first  and  second  journeys,  see  ch.  ix. 

93.  What  is  here  said  of  the  plan  of  the  Acts  explains 
still  more  strikingly  the  meagerness  of  the  record  of  the 
third  journey. 

97.  Bercea  was  to  the  south  of  the  Via  Egnatia. 

99.  Subject  of  class  essay:  The  Influence  of  Chris- 
tianity on  the  Lot  of  Woman. 

103.  Subject  of  class  essay :   Paul  at  Athens. 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  155 

104.  Subject  of  class  essay :   Paul  and  Socrates. 

113.  A  strong  argument  against  the  mythical  theory 
of  the  miracles  of  our  Lord  may  be  constructed  from  the 
paucity  of  the  miracles  attributed  to  Paul.      If  that  age 
naturally  wove  miraculous  legends  round  great  names, 
why  did  it  not  encircle  Paul  with  a  continuous  web  of 
miracle?   and  why  does  the  New  Testament  admit  that 
the  Baptist  worked  no  miracle  ? 

114.  See  Ramsay,  Letters  to  the  Seven  Churches. 

79-  Give  a  list  of  Paul's  companions  and  friends  men- 
tioned in  the  New  Testament. 

84.  What  were  the  charges  generally  brought  against 
him  before  the  authorities  ? 

91.  Where  in  his  ivritings  does  he  mention  Barnabas 
and  Mark? 

93.  Give  the  places  in  Acts  where  the  items  of  this  cata- 

logue are  recorded. 

94.  Mention  other  classical  associations  of  this  region. 
98.    What  two  kings  of  Macedonia  are  famous  in  history? 

102.  Expand  these  allusions  to  Greek  history. 

103.  Give  a   number  of  the  names  associated  with    the 

golden   age    of  Athens   and   mention  what  they 

were  famous  for. 
108.   Find  out  all  the  visions  mentioned  in  Paul's  life, 

and  prove  that  they  were  given  him  at  the  crises 

of  his  history. 
110.   Distinguish  our  Asia  and  Asia  Minor  from  the  Asia 

of  the  New  Testament. 


CHAPTER  VII 

In  the  chronological  table,  p.  138,  the  dates  of  the 
Epistles  have  already  been  given  and  the  points  of  the 
History  indicated  where  they  come  in.  It  is  a  pity  the 


156  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

Epistles  are  not  arranged  in  chronological  order  in  our 
Bibles.     Their  characteristics  may  be  mentioned : 

1  and  2  Thessalonians.     Simple  beginnings.      Attitude 
to  Christ's  second  coming. 

1  Corinthians.      Picture  of  an  apostolic  church. 

2  Corinthians.      Paul's  portrait  of  himself. 
Galatians.   Vehement  polemic  against  Judaizers. 
Romans.   Paul's  gospel. 

Philemon.   Example  of  Christian  courtesy. 
Colossians  and  Ephesians.      Paul's  later  gospel. 
Philippians.      Picture  of  Roman  imprisonment. 

1  Timothy  and  Titus.      Form  of  the  church. 

2  Timothy.      The  last  scenes. 

Ramsay  places  Galatians  before  1  and  2  Corinthians; 
compare  p.  139  above. 

116.  Compare  Shaw,  The  Pauline  Epistles. 

118.  On   PauTs  style  see   Farrar's    Excursus  at   the 
close  of  vol.  i.     The  comparison  of  it  to  that  of  Thu- 
cydides  is  more  dignified  than  that  of  the  text,  but  less 
true. 

119.  Inspiration  did  not  interfere  with  natural  char- 
acteristics of  style.      It  made  the  writer  not  less  but  more 
himself,  while  of  course  it  imparted  to  the  products  of 
his  pen  a  divine  value  and  authority. 

120-127.  Howson's  Character  of  St.  Paul;  Speer, 
The  Man  Paul;  Hausrath,  45-57;  Baur's  remarks  (ii. 
294  ff. )  on  his  intellectual  character  are  very  good.  But 
/the  principal  sources  are  2  Corinthians  and  Acts  xx. 

122.  Farrar's  treatment  of  Paul's  bodily  infirmities 
is  a  serious  blot  on  his  book ;  for  these  are  obtruded  with 
a  frequency  and  exaggeration  which  produce  an  impres- 
sion quite  different  from  that  made  by  the  references  to 
them  in  Scripture.  This  is  still  truer  of  Baring- Gould's 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  157 

Study  of  St.  Paul.  For  a  treatment  of  the  same  subject, 
realistic,  but  full  of  sympathy  and  delicacy,  see  Monod. 
Ramsay  is  of  opinion  that  the  "thorn  in  the  flesh"  was 
chronic  malarial  fever. 

122  ff.   Illustrate  these  paragraphs  fully  from  Scripture. 
123.    Compare  Paul  with  Livingstone  and  other  mission" 
aries. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

On  this  subject  compare  Neander's  Planting-  of  Chris- 
tianity, Book  ii.,  ch.  7,  and  SchafTs  Church  History;  also 
Banner-man's  Church  of  Christ.  This  chapter  is  only  a 
piecing  together  of  the  information  scattered  through  1 
Corinthians.  It  would  be  well  to  get  pupils  to  seek  out 
the  passages  of  the  Epistle  which  correspond  to  the  differ- 
ent paragraphs.  A  picture  of  a  Pauline  church  of  a 
later  date  might  be  compiled  in  the  same  way  from  the 
Pastoral  Epistles. 

136.  The  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  revealed  "at 
sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners,"  and  the  complete 
doctrine  is  to  be  obtained  by  uniting  the  representations 
of  the  various  writers  of  Scripture.  In  the  New  Testa- 
ment there  are  four  phases—  1.  In  the  Synoptical  Gospels 
the  Holy  Spirit  is  set  forth  in  His  influence  on  the  human 
nature  of  Christ ;  2.  in  the  Acts  and  Paul,  as  the  power 
for  founding  the  Church  and  converting  the  world ;  3.  in 
Paul  as  the  principle  of  the  new  life  of  Christians ;  4.  in 
John  as  the  Comforter. 

138.  Compare  the  irregularities  of  other  periods  of 
vast  change,  e.g.,  the  Reformation. 

144.  On  the  extent  to  which  an  authoritative  ecclesi- 


158  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

astical  system  is  given  in  the  New  Testament  compare 
Jus  Divinum  Presbyterii  and  Hooker's  Ecclesiastical 
Polity. 

130.  Give  the  names  of  the  principal  games  of  ancient 

times,  derived  from  the  places  where  they  were  held. 

131.  Where  are  churches  mentioned  as   meeting  in   the 

houses  of  individuals  ? 

132.  Explain   the  words   "barbarian,"   "Scythian,"  in 

Col.  iii.  11. 

135.    What  modern  divine  endeavored  to  revive  these  phe- 
nomena, and  what  is  the  name  of  the  church  he 
founded  ?      What    is   the   meaning    of   the    word 
"  charism  "  ?    Were  the  tongues  of  Pentecost  the 
same  as  those  of  1   Corinthians  ?     Give  instances 
in  which    New    Testament  prophets   did  predict 
future  events. 


CHAPTER   IX 

The  criticism  which  seeks  to  disintegrate  the  New 
Testament  writings  and  set  the  apostles  against  one  an- 
other is  founded  on  a  revival  of  the  claim  of  the  Judai- 
zers  that  their  propaganda  had  the  sanction  of  Peter  and 
the  other  original  apostles.  In  a  Handbook  like  this  it 
is  impossible  to  discuss  at  any  length  the  Tubingen 
Theory.  But  some  of  its  points  are  silently  met  in  the 
text ;  and  the  whole  theory  is  answered  by  an  attempt  to 
give  a  view  of  the  course  of  the  controversy  which  covers 
all  the  facts.  The  distinction  drawn  in  paragraphs  159  ff. 
between  the  central  question  in  dispute  and  a  subordinate 
aspect  of  the  controversy  will  be  found  to  clear  up  many 
intricacies.  Compare  Sorley's  Jewish  Christians  and 
Judaism. 

This  chapter  is  full  of  references  to  passages  in  Acts 
and  Galatians,  which  pupils  ought  to  be  asked  to  produce. 


HINTS    AND    QUESTIONS  159 

CHAPTER   X 

Viewpoints  for  lessons  on  details  omitted  or  only 
slightly  referred  to  in  the  text : 

Acts         xx.   4~l6.   Paul  the  Hirer  of  Laborers  for  Christ's 
Vineyard:  the  Unwearied  Preacher  (Troas). 
17-38.   The  Man  of  Heart  (Miletus). 
xxii.   Final  Effort  to  save  his  Country, 
xxiii.     1-10.    In  the   Dock  where  he   had   placed 

others. 

xxiii.  22-27.   The  Preacher  of  Righteousness, 
xxvi.   The  Inspired  Student, 
xxvii.    Paul  as  a  Ruler  of  Men. 

xxviii.   The  benevolence  of  Nature  and  that  of  Grace 
(Malta). 

171.  See  notes  on  ch.  iv.,  p.  141. 

The  authenticity  of  Ephesians  and  Colossians  can 
only  be  denied  by  ignoring  the  impression  of  majesty  and 
profundity  which  they  have  made  on  the  greatest  minds. 
(See  the  Introductions  in  Meyer  and  Alford. )  What 
other  mind  of  those  ages  except  Paul's  could  have  erected 
a  structure  so  magnificent  on  the  very  foundations  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans  ?  or  in  what  other  mind  was  there 
such  a  union  of  the  doctrinal  and  the  ethical  ? 

In  John's  writings  the  relation  of  believers  to  Christ 
is  illustrated  by  a  far  higher  comparison :  it  is  compared 
to  the  union  of  Father  and  Son  in  the  Deity. 

172.  See  Ernesti :   The  Ethic  of  Paul ;    also  Juncker. 

174.  See  Smith's  Voyage  of  St.  Paul;  also  Sir  Will- 
iam Ramsay's  article  on  Roads  and  Travel  in  Hastings' 
Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  vol.  v. 

176.  Burrus,  the  Praetorian  Prefect.  So  Conybeare 
and  Howson ;  but  Ramsay,  following  Mommsen,  holds  the 


160  THE    LIFE    OF    ST.    PAUL 

officer  to  have  been  the  princeps  peregrinorum,  whose 
quarters  lay  on  the  Coelian  Hill. 

On  the  various  kinds  of  imprisonment  in  Roman  law 
see  Ramsay's  Roman  Antiquities,  ch.  ix. 

177—182.  The  materials  for  this  account  of  Paul's 
prison  life  at  Rome  are  chiefly  gathered  from  the  Epistle 
to  the  Philippians. 

184.  On  the  genuineness  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles  see 
essay  by  Findley  in  Sabatier's  The  Apostle  Paul.  The 
comparative  lack  of  doctrinal  matter  in  them  is  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  they  were  written  to  ministers  well 
acquainted  with  his  doctrinal  system. 

188.  At  Tre  Fontane.  to  the  south  of  Rome,  the 
traditional  scene  of  the  execution  is  still  pointed  out ;  and 
not  far  off  stands  St.  Paul' s-outside-the- Walls,  one  of  the 
most  gorgeous  churches  in  the  world. 

164.  Trace  out  the  different  collections  which  Paul  is  re- 
corded to  have  been  engaged  with. 

166.  What  were  the  courts  of  the  temple ;  and  what  was 
the  name  of  the  Roman  fortress  which  overlooked 
them? 

171.  How  often  does  the  phrase  "in  Christ  "  (or  "in  " 

with  pronouns  referring  to  Christ)  occur  in  Ephe- 
sians  ? 

172.  Give  examples  from  Paul's  writings  of  the  applica- 

tion of  great  principles  to  small  duties. 
175.    Give  the  names  and  localities  of  other  great  Roman 

roads.     Describe  a  Roman  triumph. 
179-   Narrate  the  story  of  Onesimusf  gathering  it  from 

the  Epistle  to  Philemon. 
184.  Explain  the  name  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles* 


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